YOUTUBE

A couple goodies discovered on You Tube today. I'm getting addicted to this site.

The late, great Mclusky.

Husker Du in 1980 and 1982.

J. Mascis in togs.

Wire in 1977.

Bowie in 1973. I saw this on cable access 6 years ago and thought I was having a nightmare.

And finally, a cute video of kids playing in a park to the music of the Kinks.

CAMERON

Alright, I just got called out by 'Anonymous', who suggested that I got my rocks off from the clip I just linked to. Nope - I merely witnessed the three signs at the end:

(1) The squirm. Despite being a brainwashed Christian, Kirk is clearly uncomfortable;

(2) The two-hand cover: Kirk folds his hands right in front of his 'messiah oblongata';

(3) Kirk immediately realizes he's on camera and he's being completely obvious, so he quickly ditches the two-hand cover for the classic move, the Leg Lift. It opens up some fabric. He also crosses his arms, and that's the international sign for discomfort, proving he's a shitty actor.

When my parents made me go to church in high school, I used to check out my sexy female co- parishioners, so I'm well-versed in hiding wood in the Lord's house.

And there's my defense. Oh, and Anonymous - how are the Rangers doing in the playoffs?

BANANA

This is pretty hysterical on so many levels. Best of all, you can tell Kirk's getting aroused.

AOL

I finally decided to ditch my AOL account today. I actually attempted to do this 6 years ago, but they just signed me up for free for 24 months. I’ve heard it’s actually very difficult to do, and I’m anticipating a messy breakup. Let’s see how it goes:

I go to AOL.com and log onto my account. I look for the ‘cancel account’ option, but of course it isn’t there.

I check ‘Account Status’. It’s ‘active’ with no issues (and no options to make it inactive).

I do a keyword search for ‘cancel’, which brings 192 hits. 192?!? I could’ve signed up for a lot more crap during my days at AOL. It turns out that you can only cancel via fax, mail or phone. Apparently telegraph and passenger pigeon are no longer options. I’m not thrilled by the mail or fax options, so I decide to call.

Recording: “Are you a currently a member of AOL? You can say “yes, no, or I don’t know.”

SR: (Seriously?) “I Don’t Know.”

Recording: “If you get billed by AOL or have an email address ending with ‘aol.com’ then they consider me a member. Do I meet those requirements?

Smartass me: “I think so.”

For the next 10 minutes I try to get the automated voice to look up my account information using voice-recognition software. But the recorded message keeps cutting in and out. It's just like that trick you use when you're trying to get off the phone with someone you don't want to to talk to - "I'm sorry, I can't understand what you're saying. I'm *only* a machine." It tells me it doen’t understand my phone number or my email address after 3 or 4 tries at both. It finally asks for my zip code, and I'm wondering if it's going to reposition a satellite to try and find me like they do on '24'.

Finally the machine gets frustrated and gives up. I win? I get transferred to 'Larry', who sounds like a human being. In fact, he sounds like he’d make an adequate replacement for Chef on South Park now that Isaac Hayes is leaving to spend more time moving up the tone scale.

SR: Hi Larry, I’m calling to cancel my account.

Larry: I’m sorry to hear that.

SR: (It’s not you Larry, it’s me.)

Larry: Why are you giving up your account?

SR: No general reason. I just don’t need it anymore.

Larry: Were you aware that you could use America Online with your high-speed internet connection? I have a high-speed internet connection...

SR: Oh, you do?

Larry: Oh, yes I do. Many people do. The reason I keep America Online, I get full security protection and access to all of AOL’s services.

SR: Of course you keep an account, Larry – you work there.

Larry: What? Oh, no, we’re not required to have it. I like to keep it, and you can get a discount...

SR: What sort of discount?

Larry: I think..I think you can get it for $4.95 / month.


It was actually pretty uneventful from there. No offer to extend my membership, and the whole time with Larry only took a little longer than I did trying to enunciate my phone number. And now Larry, an AOL employee, is paying more for AOL than I am, which makes me happy.

I’m still steeled for a fight, though. I think I’m going to try and cancel some credit cards. That always gets nasty.

FIGHT

Another take on the incident with Liam & Me at Sin-e. Let's call this one fan fiction.

STINK

In Stephen King's The Shining, Dick Hallorann tells little Danny Torrance that he and his grandmother used to smell oranges before they'd 'shine'. That smell of oranges told Dick that somewhat was happening that other folks don't know about. Oranges are sweet and nutritious, and the general idea here is that this sixth sense will get Danny out of trouble, despite an alcoholic child-abusing father, no friends and a lonely winter in a snowed-in hotel.

People who have Cotard's syndrome are depressed and suicidal, like the rest of us, but they take it a step further: they believe they are walking corpses, and can often times claim to smell their own flesh rotting and feel worms crawling through their skin. That's pretty disgusting. (This was brought to my attention in Chuck Klosterman's book 'Killing Yourself to Live', which Ted just finished reading and I'm coincidentally reading now.)

This morning, from the time I walked out my front door until the moment I got to work, all I could smell was fried chicken. I'm a little bothered by this. Either I'm receiving premonitions about greasy deep-fried trouble that will rear its head in the near future, or there's a chicken with Cotard's syndrome trapped inside my body. Either way, I'm uneasy.

But a little Googling Cotard's syndrome brought me here, where a music fan from Australia rates his bumping into Strokes lead singer Julian Casablancas as one of the sublime moments of his life. I'm hoping this is the extent of the uneasiness I was meant to uncover.

(Oh, and like some of my friends, this Aussie takes time out from writing about politics and music to make gratuitous pet posts.)

GRANDADDY

Next month, the Modesto, CA band Grandaddy will release their final album and move on into the twilight, roping broken down computers and spraypainting pretty sunsets on the doors of rogue trucks broken down under the western freeway.

I've got three Grandaddy albums. They're uneven but reassuring with their lazy smirking post-apocalyptic lyrics, sugary melodies and synthesizers. I've never considered them a favorite band, but they've made some moments that have stuck with me for ages: The guitar hook on 'Crystal Lake', the 'do-do-doos' on 'El Caminos in the West' are good examples. The first song off their Y2K-themed 'Sophtware Slump' (He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's The Pilot) is gorgeous, and the synth hook on AM 180 is the catchiest thing I've ever heard. I first heard it 8 years ago and I haven't been able to stop listening to it since. (It's the song played during the montage in 28 Days Later when the non-zombies hit the empty grocery store.)

More than their music, I've always loved their spirit. They've written the prettiest song ever recorded about a robot who writes poetry, and come up with titles like 'Broken Household Appliance National Forest'. When Strikes Again! signed up for myspace, they were the first band with a myspace account I found, and after they accepted our request, I firmly believed they were our friends, like we could show up at their front door and they'd find some space for us to crash.

My favorite moment in their career is between their first and second major label releases. Facing the usual pressure to re-deliver a shinier version of the record that helped break them, Grandaddy responded by writing, recording and sequencing an entire fake album and delivering it to their record company. In later interviews, they claim it was to lower expectations, which is fantastic. They pull out fake English accents, go over the top with the synths, and reference 2 Live Crew. Jason Lytle, Grandaddy's singer, sequences the record perfectly so that the first few songs sound like they could be serious Grandaddy submissions, but after 4-5 songs, you realize the thing's a well-crafted joke.

I don't know the whole story, but after the joke was delivered, they gave it the fake band name 'Arm of Roger' and album title 'The Ham and It's Lily', and released it under the fake record imprint 'Sweat of the Alps'. They made it available on CD Baby. I remember reading about this in the music rags back when it happened, but I was reminded by the Onion AV Club's new Random Rules feature, where Isaac Brock from Modest Mouse references it.

I love the album through and through. It's so easy to listen to from the perspective of a label suit and imagining them freaking out progressively as each track comes up. Track four (One Time They Called And Asked For Freddy) lampoons 'The Joker' and then goes into a three minute loop:

"some people call me a free-range jackass
some people call me a son of a bitch
some people call me and ask for people who don't live here
I'm going to blame all the zeroes in my phone number

One time they called and asked for (Rodney, Helen, Shauna, FREDDY, Melissa, etc.) "

I wish more artists would play jokes on the industry.

The album ends with "The Pussy Song", which is in my Top 10 of funniest songs ever recorded. (I will upload this song as soon as I figure out how.)

Goodnight, Grandaddy.

UPDATE:

Let me know if this link works.

STRIKES

Strikes Again! played its first show in four months at Sin-e.

It was an exciting show for many reasons, the four month hiatus for starters. On top of that, it was our first show playing an entire set of new material. Some of these songs have been in our setlists for the last few years, and we've been recording a handful of them at Smoke & Mirrors, but to us it felt like we were stepping forward.

Here was the really exciting part: singer John van Atta called us all individually that day to tell us that he had a bad, bad sinus infection and wouldn't be able to help us load in. (For a day job, John works with kids and gets lots of exposure to sticky, bacteria-laden hugs, so he gets sick pretty regularly.)

John continued with his message: "You have a very good chance of getting sick". Turns out John also had pinkeye. Because John normally collides with us during a Strikes show (he took out half of my entire drumset at one show with one ill-timed move) , I realized he was merely anticipating that we'd catch what he had. Pretty thoughtful on his part. So we let him sleep.

The rest of the band spent our last few healthy hours eating some Cuban food on Avenue C, then watching a tight set from Ashford Breaks who started with one of my favorite Brian Eno songs, "Needles in the Camel's Eye". We were a little behind schedule when we took the stage, and Jay our soundman asked us to start as soon as we could.

2 minutes into our set, the kick drum was sliding all over the place. I've dealt with the sliding kick drum in the past, and there are enough breaks in our songs for me to pull it back to earth, but there was something really wrong here. To my fault, I didn't really take a good look at it before we started; I'd just seen Ashford Breaks' guy play it with no apparent faults. But normally when it's not anchored down it just slides away from me, and I pull it back. Tonight it would slide and rotate 18 inches to the right and then stop dead, google-eyed. I could see it was cockeyed, and I wanted to go fix it, but that's the thing about a Strikes Again! show; certain parts of my brain just stop working, and other senses get heightened. I couldn't walk out there and look at a bass drum leg--my adrenaline was pumping. Plus, walking disease John van Atta was right in front of my drum set; going out there to fix the drum guaranteed certain quarantine.

Three songs in, I thought I'd found a sweet spot on the threadbare drum rug, as we ran through Cure All. This is a song I'm able to sit back on and listen to the band, so I'm glad the drum sat still long enough to drink in the moment. It felt great.

half a song later, the kick drum went mobile again. It was bouncing so much that my kick pedal started falling apart. It slid so far to my right that I had to go bowlegged to get it. I was kicking at my pedal the way you kicked at the neighborhood dog who'd lash out at your ankles while you rode by him on your broken-down bike. Every second or third nervous lunge at your right pedal would catch him squarely in the face, making him mad, sending him away temporarily, only to come back.

By the time we got to 'Hell Disaster', our set closer, I'd had enough. I needed one song with kick drum. So I just stopped after the first chorus and got up. I picked up the kick drum, put it squarely on the rug, kicked out the stool, knelt down, and spent a good 15-20 seconds making sure my pedal was on securely. Jeff (guitar) and John (bass) kept playing, giving me good cover. The great thing was that the song sounded really good without the drums, so I got caught up in listening to the song, and lost track of what I was doing. Eventually, I got the kick to what I thought was fixed. I counted back in and we were right back in the song. (It turns out that that moment was John van Atta's favorite of the entire set; I was oblivious, but the band had completely picked me up. )

30 seconds later the bass drum was gone again. I think it might have actually left the club, caught a cab to the East River, and jumped in. And I got blind pissed. This was the house kit, yes, it saved me the trouble of bringing all my drums, yes, but for the children, why can't I get the goddamn kick drum to sit still for 30 goddamn seconds?

So we get to the last 5 seconds of Hell Disaster, and I just started kicking the bass drum. Not the pedal; the drum itself. It ended up in the middle of the stage, and I forget how it happened,
but it ended up on its side in the front of the stage. The pedal was still attached, sticking up into the air. Everyone was still playing, but I got up and started pounding the crap out of it with my sticks. I'd kicked at and missed that bass drum 100 times during our set, and I was cocksure I'd get every one of those back.

John, John and Jeff swallowed the chaos and kept on playing. For good measure, they sent the rest of the kit to the ground, and the stage became a swimming sea of cymbals and drum detritus. They had my back, and that's when I remembered how good it felt to be in a band.

Later I found out that our pink-eyed infection-drowned singer had survived the set, but had inexplicably started bleeding at the hand halfway through our set. We all take our lumps. I hope he lives. Meanwhile, I can't wait for the next show.

Oh yeah -- the drummer from the next band (Liam and Me) had set up his snare drum at the front of the stage while we were playing and was practicing his parts while we were performing. What an asshole! I hope he gets pinkeye.

DENIRO

I passed Robert DeNiro on my way to the 6 train this morning. It's odd to see anyone his age in my neighborhood, much less someone who's played Satan and had sex with Lisa Bonet all in the same movie.

He's incredibly short. But his head's as big as a hot air balloon and his nose is as big as my face. And he was glaring at me for some reason. What did I ever do to him, except sit through his last 15 years of movies?

STINK/FANS (3 of 3)

Stinkrock's back on again. Sometimes it takes awhile to find the switch. It was in the fridge behind something we'll call a 'tomato'.

For now, let's finish up the shit hits the fans, shall we? The time is right, as the "Replacements" announced some sort of reunion this past week. I don't know how Chris Mars backing vocals and Tommy "Chinese Democracy" Stinson root notes on a solo Paul song count as a Replacements reunion. Unless Bob Stinson was buried in a maternity dress with a shovel, a TV/VCR and a copy of 'Re-animator', the Replacements are still done.

Let's roll the tape...

TRACK 15: BREAK DOWN

Following the release of their potential dollar-grabbin' 'Don't Sell Our Souls', the Replacements were sent out by their record company to open for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in the hopes they'd get some positive unfluence from a professional rock band. Like they were grounded by their parents or something. On the tour, Tom hears the line 'rebel without a clue' from 'I'll Be You' and snatches it up, sticks it into 'Into the Great Wide Open'. Kim Basinger stars in the video, and later wins an Oscar.

The Replacements should sue. Instead, they go back in time and do a lovely smoky half-cover of the forgotten Petty classic 'Break Down'.

Petty, petty, petty.

TRACK 16: NO MORE THE MOON SHINES ON LOREENA

Carter Family cover. You're obliged to do a shot of whiskey during this one, and maybe let your mangy hound sleep on your feet while he gnaws on the bone of a squirrel you shot this morning.

TRACK 17: MERRY GO ROUND

In the deal of the century, I convinced my parents to let me stop taking piano lessons so I could learn the drums. I was about 11, and they let me set it up in my bedroom. I borrowed two cassettes from my older sister, which I don't think I ever gave back: Led Zeppelin IV and Motley Crue's 'Too Fast For Love'. Black Dog was too hard to learn, Rock and Roll was too fast,
Battle of Evermore sucked, so I'd play along with Stairway then switch over to the Crue. The first Crue record is solid, and Merry Go Round is one of the best songs on it. Bob Stinson thought so too. Are you going to argue with him? He's dead!

TRACK 18: LEFT HERE IN THE DARK

I just googled 'Shit Hit the Fans' to figure out where the hell this song comes from, and a link to my last blog post came up second. That's no help.

Bob teases the crowd with the intro from AC/DC's 'For Those About to Rock' and launches into this song. It's well below average. Is it a replacements song? It's got the same chord progression as 'ROCK in the USA'. Maybe if Paul's middle name was 'Puma', this would've been a hit.

TRACK 19: TAKIN' CARE OF BUSINESS

Tommy and Chris start out on a jazz exploration, and get cut off by the runny yogurt classic rock crap that is 'TCB'. Paul makes up the lyrics, but they somehow end up worse. They make it to the solo and then it dies. I wish that happened in every rock song.

TRACK 20: I WILL FOLLOW

Think of the last five songs of 'Shit' as the heads of the five families from Godfather and the Replacements as the Corleone goons. First up: 'I Will Follow'. Bob plays the intro and stops. Crowd cheers. Paul plays the riff and stops. Crowd doesn't cheer. Bob plays the intro again, and Chris joins in. Crowd gives up, band follows suit. Welcome to the Replacements.

TRACK 21: JUMPIN' JACK FLASH

"Jumpin' Jack Flask?"

Paul takes a request, and the band butchers this tired Stones song for a verse and a chorus. Honestly? It's never sounded better.

Tommy tries to figure something out on bass. What is he, 16? He can't even call a 900 number without parental permission. He doesn't make it. Bob noodles on the national anthem. Maybe he thinks he's at Woodstock.

TRACK 22: RADIO FREE EUROPE

Like pulling a plane into a mountainside, Paul steers the band into REM's early single. It took a decade of farty art students to figure out what the hell Michael Stipe was saying. Back here, Paul doesn't know, care, or give a shit. He screams most of the way through.

Rock trivia: Peter Buck plays the guitar solo on 'I Will Dare'. My friend Dfactor bought the Mats a round of drinks after a blistering soundcheck back in the '80s and asks if Peter's a good guitar player. Paul responds with the BJ in the cheek motion. At least he does in my version.

If Peter Buck and Paul Westerberg had been in Peter, Paul & Mary then (a): Puff the Magic Dragon would've lived by the Dairy Queen in a trailer park and (b) Mary would've gotten kicked out.

In classic fashion, the song ends just as Paul gets to the chorus. 'Calling a...'

TRACK 23: MORE FUN IN THE NEW WORLD

'Here's another band that helped us along in our illustrious career'.

X cover. Paul gets all serious for a second, like the philosophical drunk who suddenly decides he has something to say. Sorry, dude - you played the Jacksons 17 songs ago. You're done. Let's take it home.

TRACK 24: (last song) LET IT BE

CROWD: "Yeah!"

PAUL (voice) : "The Beatles?"

GUY IN CROWD: "Yeah, I Want to Hold Your Hand!"

PAUL (guitar): Satisfaction by the Stones (Name That Tune Version)

TOMMY (bass): fucks up Satisfaction

GUY IN CROWD: Beatles!

The Replacements start playing Let it Be, and it fades to black quickly. Show over.


The show ended when a Mats crew guy spied the taper and snatched the tape. But is it a
coincidence that this album ends with the namesake of the best album the Replacements ever made?