Skip to main content

Now the plain blondes are playing along with you

Songs in my head:
"On the Table" by Carl Newman
"Old Man" by Neil Young

MTV News has a great article that compares sports fans to music and movie fans. I especially dig this quote: "And then there's the pronoun abuse. 'We won the game!' You did? Really? When was the last time you heard a fan of Wes Anderson's films exclaim, 'Hey, did you catch our latest movie, The Life Aquatic?'"

Here's my deal about sports: I enjoy watching sports (especially football and baseball) from time to time. I really enjoy playing sports (especially kickball and flag football). However, I do not understand people who get depressed when "their" team loses or get an orgazmic buzz when "their" team wins. Pardon? Just because you tune in and/or attend a game does not make you a member of the team. The audience enhances the game and makes the vibe very exciting, but still, there is a big separation between the audience and the players. As a music fan and a movie fan, I'm just an observer. If I like or dislike a record, a live show or a film, I'll talk about it. However, I don't get bummed if a band I like puts out an unsatisfying record or puts on a lackluster show or a movie really stunk. Some things I just don't understand . . .

NME reveals the tracklisting for Ryan Adams' double CD, Cold Roses.

Punknews.org adds more fuel to the fire about whether or not blink 182 is still together. So much for the "indefinite hiatus" status . . .

I saw the trailer for this movie over the weekend. Cool subject matter, but doesn't this seem redundant since Dogtown and Z Boys pretty much covers the subject matter (sans melodrama and creative license)?

Millencolin's latest record is called Kingwood. I'm curious if the've ever been to that part of town in Houston . . .

Saw something encouraging on my way to kickball on Sunday: as I passed by a local church, I saw a mother and her son walking on the sidewalk. The boy had a pair of drumsticks and started air-drumming. He couldn't help himself from hitting the invisible toms and cymbals but his mother kept putting her arms out to stop him. Nothing like suppression of the arts to make people want them even more . . .

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Catherine Wheel

Originally posted: Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 Despite managing to release five proper albums, Catherine Wheel was one of those bands that always seemed to slip past the mainstream rock crowd. Yes, they got some nice airplay in their day, but people seem to have forgotten about them. You may hear “Black Metallic” or “Waydown” on a “classic alternative” show on Sirius or XM or maybe even on terrestrial radio, but that’s about it. For me, they were one of most consistent rock bands of the ’90s, meandering through shoegazer, hard rock, space rock and pop rock, all while eluding mainstream pigeonholing. Led by the smooth, warm pipes of vocalist/guitarist Rob Dickinson (cousin of Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson), Catherine Wheel featured Brian Futter on lead guitar, Dave Hawes on bass and Neil Sims on drums. They weren’t a pretty-boy guitar band, but they weren’t a scuzzy bunch of ragamuffins either. Though the band hailed from England, Catherine Wheel found itself more welcome on American air
4 comments
Read more

Best of 2021

  Last year, my attention span was not wide enough to listen to a lot of LPs from start to finish. Too much went on in 2020 to focus on 10-15 albums, so I went with only a couple to spotlight. Well, 2021 was a little better, as I have a list of top four records, and a lot of individual tracks.  (I made a lengthy Spotify playlist ) So, without further ado, here’s my list of favorites of the year: Albums Deafheaven, Infinite Granite (listen) Hands down, my favorite album of the year. I was not sure where Deafheaven would go after another record that brought My Bloody Valentine and death metal fans together, but they beautifully rebooted their sound on Infinite Granite. The divisive goblin vocals are vastly pared-down here, as are the blast beats. Sounding more inspired by Slowdive, the band has discovered a new sonic palette that I hope they explore more of in the future. It’s a welcome revelation. I still love their older material, but this has renewed my love of what these guys do.  J
Post a Comment
Read more

Hello, Control

I'm still a big fan of iTunes . I haven't tried Napster , Urge or eMusic as I've been perfectly happy with Apple's program ever since I downloaded it two years ago. However, an annoying new feature has come up with its latest version, 7.0. Whenever you pull up your music library, a sidebar taking up 3/4ths of the screen appears plugging the iTunes Music Store. Why is this an annoyance? Well, first and foremost, since you can't close the sidebar, you can't escape it. I believe a music library is a private collection, a spot away from the music store. So what's the need for constant advertisements and plugs? To provide a better visual, let me describe what I see whenever I pull up a song in my iTunes library. When I listen to "This is a Fire Door Never Leave Open" by the Weakerthans, I see a graphic for Left and Leaving , the album that it comes from (and available in the iTunes Music Store), along with a list of the Weakerthans' other albums,
3 comments
Read more