music

Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame Ballot

· April 9, 2025 · Musings · , , , , , · No Comments

Looks like the list of Rock n’ Roll Hall o’ Fame nominees is out for this year.

Seeing as the first qualification to get on the list is to have released your first album 25 years earlier, the list usually works as a wake-up call to just how old I’m getting. A few years ago, Eminem made the list and my first thought was, “How is that possible? He’s still one of those newfangled rappers. Defining what rap will be like in the upcoming century. Holy shit, is the century not new anymore?”

This year, none of the nominees provided quite the AARP-sponsored wake-up call that some of the previous lists did. 

As far as I can tell, there aren’t any who actually released their first album in 2000, but the two that more or less jibe with the “Hit the Scene in 2000” are OutKast and White Stripes.

If you were to ask me when either band was big, I’d probably guess around 2000. When you add in the fact that neither band lasted long after their initial stardom, it’s safe to assume that if you hear an OutKast song or a White Stripes song, your memories are firmly planted in W’s first term as president. 

Although, if you had asked me how many years came between Eminem and OutKast, I would’ve guessed five to ten years instead of the, in reality, two. This obviously doesn’t fit my earlier belief that Eminem’s career couldn’t have been so “recent.” The thing is: I always knew Eminem hit the scene in 1998. My fuzziness was on how far back in the rearview the year 1998, not Eminem himself, was.

As for the White Stripeswould anyone question they’ve been around for at least 25 years? Hasn’t “Seven Nation Army” been on constant loop at every sporting event since at least then? Be honest, if I told you that the 1992 Chicago Bulls came on the court to that song, nobody would question it. I literally thought to myself that it was Trevor Hoffman’s entrance music, but turns out that was “Enter Sandman,” by Metallica. Some songs just equal impending doom to one’s sporting adversaries.

At my daughter’s volleyball tournaments, the vast majority of the teams have taken to singing the famous “Seven Nations Army” riff while coming to their timeout huddle. When their coach has called the timeout, meaning they’re not playing well, it’s subdued. Some teams don’t do it at all. But, boy howdy, when the other team calls one because your team just went on a 7-2 run or something, they’re jumping up and spinning around as they’re singing it.

I don’t know if she or they even know which song it comes from. They just know that “Woh, woh-wuh-oh, wuh-whooooa Oooooohhhhh” is a bad-ass bass riff that was meant for sports. 

Like “Smoke on the Water” was in my day. Or when Beavis and Butthead sang the riff from “Iron Man.” The riff is bigger than the song.

Yes kids, at one point, Iron Man brought to mind Black Sabbath, not Robert Downey, Jr.

So sorry, neither of the “new” bands vying for Hall of Fame induction this year strike me as too new. Both feel like they’ve earned their oldness. Whether or not either are truly HOF-worthy isn’t for me to decide. I could make an argument that both are legendary and could make an argument that both are one-hit wonders. Does Roger Maris belong in the baseball Hall of Fame? Probably not. Would it bother me if he was? Not in the slightest. 

Harold Baines being in the Baseball Hall does bother me some. 

Where this year’s Rock HOF grew interesting this year wasn’t the 25 year olds new kids on the block, but some of the others on the list. 

Honestly, I wasn’t entirely sure there was an addendum list. Most years there’s enough noobs that they’re the only ones who get the headlines. But did you know there are bands that, much like in the baseball Hall of Fame, stay on the ballot if they don’t get enough votes? I sure didn’t.

To be honest, I don’t know if they stay on the ballot in the exact same way as baseball. In baseball, if you get above 5%, but less than 75%, of the vote, your name will appear on the next ballot. Up to a maximum of ten years. If you can’t get 75% after ten years, you’re done.

Rock n’ Roll doesn’t seem quite so structured, in that a number of artists will appear on one ballot, not get enough votes, then skip a year or two.

Regardless, let’s take a look at some of the returning faces. Oasis, Mariah Carey, and Soundgarden make perfect sense. They were big in the 1990s, so it would make sense that they linger around. Mariah Carey’s career starts earlier than the other two, and in all honesty, I’m surprised she didn’t make the cut on her Christmas song, alone. Or maybe the Christmas song is the only reason she’s still being considered. “Fantasy” doesn’t have quite the legs of “Seven Nation Army.” The main source of legs for Mariah Carey is the Santa outfit she wore in the video.

The other two returnees are New Order and Cyndi Lauper. Again, I won’t opine on either of their merits, or lack thereof, but I kinda think that nobody will have changed their mind on either of those in the past year, right? I mean, if somebody’s going to say, “OMG, did you realize that the woman who sang ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun?” ALSO sang “Time After Time? What range!” probably shouldn’t be given the power to vote for the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame.

However, my true confusion in this regard is the other “First Timers” on the ballot. I thought once your career hit 25, you were put on the ballot. That’s how it’s done in baseball, although they use five years retired after a ten-year career as the minimum requirement. However, there are seven first timers on this year’s Rock n Roll ballot whose careers are substantially older than OutKast.

The first one that caught my eye was Phish. When I first saw them, I nodded along. Much like Eminem, Phish seems to have been around about 25 years. After all, I remember seeing them at a festival my freshman year of college and that couldn’t have been more than… wait a minute!

That was back in 1993, which by my math, is more than 25 years ago. Not that most Phish fans can stay sober enough to count that much. I was going to say “count that high,” but Phish fans are great at doing thing super high. In fact, they probably meant to add Phish to the Hall of Fame ten years ago, just as soon as they were done with this bong hit. Then all of a sudden it was 2025.

I shouldn’t trash them. Joe Cocker’s also a first-timer. His cover of a Beatles song was the theme song of a 1980s tv show about the 1960s. 

When I first saw Joe Cocker, I thought, “Oh right, because he just died recently.” Then I looked it up. He died in 2014. Why the hell does time keep moving?

Black Crowes are also on the first timers list. I think their careers started around the same time as Phish. Both artists also bring up the key question of what makes a Hall of Famer. How long do you have to be famous before you’re truly famous? And is it more important to be super important to a small group of fans or have one or two universally known songs? I would assume quite a few people have no idea who Phish is. Everyone knows “Macarena.”

In baseball, they favor longevity over flash. That’s why Maris, who broke the single-season HR record, wasn’t ever really considered. He wasn’t exactly a flash in the pan – for a three-year span, he was as solid as it gets. But his entire career was only eleven years, and most of those years were forgettable.

Mark McGwire also was never going to be a Hall of Famer, even if they weren’t punishing steroid users. He was a stud as a rookie and might have single-handedly (or double-handedly with Sammy Sosa) saved baseball after the 1994 strike. The only person more “famous” than Mark McGwire in 1998 was probably Monica Lewinski.

But the middle of McGwire’s career was injury-ridled. And if it weren’t for the ‘roids, he would’ve been out of baseball by the time those magical seasons captivated the nation.

Still more of a HOFer than Baines, in my opinion, who only got in because he played forever. As a mediocre designated hitter. Yet Jim Edmonds, who hit more home runs in 3,000 fewer at-bats while playing stellar defense, doesn’t even get enough votes to make it to a second ballot.

Sorry, we were talking about music, right?

After Phish and Black Crowes, the first-timers get even crazier. Billy Idol? Bad Company?

Baseball fans often joke about someone all of a sudden getting better ten years after they retired. Andruw Jones, another centerfielder with stats not as good as Jim Edmonds, got 7% of the vote his first year on the ballot. By his fourth year of eligibility, he was up to 33% and in this year’s voting, he’s up to 66. He’s got two years of eligibility left and many think he’ll get there. But again, he’s done absolutely nothing to add to his resume in the past eight years. His career stats are the same as the always were, but fifty-nine percent of voters have changed their mind on whether or not those stats are worthy.

Musicians are a little different because they can still make music after their initial eligibility period. Billy Idol, for instance, released a single a few years ago. It was good. But it was no “Rebel Yell” or “Eyes Without a Face” or “Dancing with Myself.” If those first three didn’t convince someone he’s a Hall of Famer, then “Bitter Taste” ain’t gonna win them over.

And now that I looked it up, “Bitter Taste” came out in 2021, so it’s even less likely it affected his credentials in the past 365 days. The only thing I can put a finger on is that he’s touring with Joan Jett this year. So maybe it was just a matter of being reminded he existed.

Bad Company makes even less sense. They’ve been around a decade longer than Billy Idol. Shit, I was playing “Feel Like Making Love” on my acoustic guitar to woo girls in the dorm rooms back before I even saw Phish in concert. It’s a simple song to learn. Basic three-chord progression. Probably not indicative of the Hall of Fame. Unless they’re going to put them in a special wing with Wang Chung as bands who shamelessly write songs featuring the name of the band.

I did see that they officially broke up/stopped touring in 2023 due to health concerns. I guess that was enough to get them in the rotation. Although according to Wikipedia, they’ve gone their separate ways a couple times before. Guess this was the one that actually got the attention.

Their last album, by the way, was released in 1996.

There’s one more crazy nomination I’ve intentionally saved for last. If someone whose heyday was the 1980s and a band from the 1970s doesn’t give you enough of a HOF WTF, how about someone from the 1950s? Because the last “new” nominee is none other than Chubby Checker.

Yes, Chubby Checker of “The Twist.” And…um… “Let’s Twist Again.” And “Limbo rock,” going off the grid for the final installment of the trilogy like Back to the Future.

Those last two songs hit in 1962. Since then, Chubby Checker’s done pretty much nothing new or noteworthy.

In his defense, he might be the last of the true Rock n’ Rollers. When the Beatles hit, Rock dropped the n’ Roll suffix. So Bad Company and Billy Idol shouldn’t even be eligible.

Unlike the two aforemtioneds, I can’t find jack shit Chubby Checker has done in the past year to trigger his all of a sudden nomination. Looks like he once protested outside the Hall of Fame because he felt he was being overlooked. That was back in 2002, so obviously it was a hugely influential protest. They got right on that shit! After only a couple decades. If they had waited two more years, his protest would’ve been eligible for its own inclusion in the Hall of Fame.

Alongside other new 2002 bands like Beyonce, Maroon 5, and Avril Lavigne.

And, I don’t know, Katrina & the Waves?

Jimmy Buffett’s Heirs

· January 20, 2025 · Musings · , , , , , · No Comments

I never really got around to posting about Jimmy Buffett dying. 

Suzanne Sommers’s death merited a full analysis of seven seasons of farcical entertainment within a matter of weeks.

But the musician who’s been on my radio the most over the past fifteen years got little more than a snide comment on my year-end concert review about maybe I shouldn’t have waited for his next tour to take Daughter to see him.

The morning he died, we were getting ready for Daughter’s first softball tournament. We had to be up and out of the house by 6:30 am, which is no easy feat. As we’re fumbling out the door, bleary eyed, I checked my phone and let out an “Oh, shit.”

Not an angry “Oh Shit” or, more likely for me, an I-forgot-something or a That-field-is-half-an-hour-away-and-we’re-supposed-to-be-there-in-ten-minutes “Oh Shit.” More like a bad-news-that-isn’t-too-shocking-but-still-a-gut-punch “Oh Shit.” You know the kind. 

I alerted Wife and Daughter and we were on our way to softball. Didn’t really have a chance to process it. 

Radio Margaritaville was, naturally, already on in my car. They were playing some Jimmy ballad , and when in ended, the somber DJ was barely holding it together. Not sure how many times they had to preface each music break with the “If you haven’t heard” announcement, but I assume it didn’t get any easier. Hell, they probably had it worse than any of us. I just lost a guy I’ve seen in concert a few times. For all they knew, the radio station they DJ’d for might be on the verge of belly up.

Now, over a year later, Radio Margaritaville seems to be doing fine. I think they went a whole month before playing any non-Jimmy Buffett songs, but by now they’ve found their stride. They’ve expanded the number of “Buffett Buffets,” where they play a full hour of Jimmy songs, from two to three a day. And it’s not like the concerts they played when he was alive were live, anyway.

Looking back, it’s amazing to realize how bad he was there at the end, but how he never let any of his fans knew. Gotta keep up those appearances as the guy who’s never bogged down by life. Even though we all knew he gave up drinking years ago, changes in attitude means he ain’t got no time for cancer.

Those close to him knew. At a concert the night after Jimmy died, Mac McAnaly said “Last weekend, I said goodbye to my friend.” 

So yeah, kinda get the feeling that Equal Strains on all Parts was always intended to be released posthumously. “Bubbles Up” sure sounds like something he wrote for the purpose of getting his fans through the bad news. I thought it was the perfect Jimmy Buffett send-off. 

Until I heard another one. 

Some aspects of being a parrothead are the same as they were before. Boat drinks, Aloha shirts, and the like. The restaurants and resorts and cruise line aren’t going anywhere. Jimmy was as much lifestyle as he was music. And as for that music, it’s all still there.

Cover bands feel a little weird now. It’s odd that a tribute band feels more authentic when the artist is still alive. Like, if I can see the actual act, why should there be covers? But for some reason, a Neil Diamond tribute feels more natural than a Frank Sinatra one. A guy who dresses up like Elton John is an homage. A guy who dresses up like Freddy Mercury or Jimi Hendrix is trying too hard.

However, while cover bands might become more and more verboten, there seem to be two musical acts vying for the parrot-sized hole in the industry. And maybe I don’t speak for the entirety of Fruitcake Nation, but one of them is light years ahead of the other. 

The two artists are Kenny Chesney and Zac Brown. Toby Keith might’ve been an interesting third option except that he died before Jimmy.

One humungous caveat to the entire diatribe I’m about to go on is that I’m not much of a country music fan. Both of these artists originated from that realm, as did Jimmy at the start, and maybe I just “don’t get” one of them because he’s still more country than… than… whatever the hell Jimmy was.

It’s not beach music, because that’s a certain sound from the 1960s. It’s not party music or island music because, again, they already kinda bring up other existing genres.

I’ll just call it Parrot music.

Okay, so what’s Kenny Chesney’s claim to the Parrothead Crown? Plenty of his songs are on similar wavelengths as Jimmy’s. “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problem” is kinda on the level of “Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude” and the instinct behind “Don’t Blink” seems to echo the sentiment of “He Went to Paris.” That song came from an album called “Poets and Pirates,” so you can’t tell me he wasn’t aiming full-bore for that Jimmy Buffett island in the musical ocean. After a solid decade of more or less straight Country.

Unless he was chasing that oh-so-lucrative Bertie Higgins space in the zeitgeist.

The Zac Brown band pivoted from Country to Parrot much earlier in their career. Their first hit, “Chicken Fried,” was 100% Country, but by the time they actually released their first album, they were solidly in parrot territory. Both “Toes” and “Knee Deep” are about vacationing, capturing the “Changes in Attitude” that Jimmy didn’t really discover until he was seven albums in. 

Initially, I wondered if Zac Brown might have gone too party too soon. I figured he’d make a bunch of songs about bangin’ hotties and hangovers, but wouldn’t be able to reflect on the daily grind. For full effect, those latitudes and attitudes must change.

But it didn’t take long for him to add wistful songs. One that jumps out to me is “You and Islands,” which sounds suspiciously like it should be about rum, but is more about the early days of quarantine and wanting to get back to the good old days of hanging out with each other. The most impressive part was that it was released in July, 2020, only a few months into quarantine. By comparison, I started writing this post back around the anniversary of Jimmy Buffett’s death. Zac Brown wrote, recorded, and released a song in less time than it took me to write 2,000 words about Zac Brown.

For what it’s worth, if Toby Keith were still alive, we’d probably be looking at something like “I Love this Bar” in the ballad realm, although maybe missing some of that “meaning of life” sentiment. “As Good As I Once Was” is a hilarious take on the theme of “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” one that I’m sure Jimmy enjoyed. And if there’s any party anthem that rivals “Margaritaville,” it’s “Red Solo Cup.”

But it’s hard to pass the ultimate “Laid Back” crown on to someone who made his career with “Angry American”.

Obviously I’ve tipped my hand, so I’m not going to drag out the various pros and cons of Zac Brown and Kenny Chesney. Instead I’ll focus on why I gravitate toward Zac Brown. And away from Kenny Chesney.

One major caveat before I delve too deeply. Despite knowing most of Toby Keith’s catalog, I’m not really a country music fan. Some of my friends who are more into country music tell me I’m misreading Kenny Chesney. That he was a bona fide star before he started to pivot. Maybe. But then why did he pivot?

I’m not going to blame my dislike of him entirely on his marriage to Renee Zellweger, but I’d be lying if I said that didn’t play a part. It seemed more a publicity stunt than anything else, rather suspiciously aligned with his move from country into mainstream. Sure, Renee Zellweger might be a wee bit mainstream, but you know what she isn’t? Laid back. 

There’s rumors that she was his beard. I don’t know if I buy that, because a beard relationship needs to last longer than a few months to be worthwhile. If they had some agreement to enter a loveless marriage so he could either stay in country or move into pop, it would’ve lasted longer.

Maybe they’re just two people incapable of real emotion since one acts in romance movies and the other sings songs and neither of them realized that the acting is supposed to stop at some point.

To me, most of Chesney’s Parrot music sounds, at best, insincere. Hollow. Dare I say pandering? It sounds like what an uptight guy thinks a laid-back person would say. His “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problem,” in addition to being a phrase that’s been in popular usage since at least the 1980s, might as well be Matthew McConaughey calling out “Alright, Alright, Alright.” The only difference being that McConaughey owns it.

And “Key Lime Pie” is about as subtle a double entendre as AC/DC’s “Big Balls.” Maybe Renee Zellweger helped him write it. Neither of them enjoy cunnilingus, or maybe they’d never even tried it, but they’d heard of people who had and assumed they could make up what it’s like and the rubes would never notice. Like when the 40-Year-Old Virgin described breasts like a bag of sand. 

I’m surprised he didn’t follow it up with a song titled, “No Really, I Like Intercourse!”

Oh, and Kenny likes drinking, too! Tequila, usually, because that’s probably what some marketing exec determined was seen a manly booze. In reality, he’s probably a wine spritzer kinda guy. 

Here’s a Zac Brown lyric for comparison: “My bartender, she’s from the island, her body’s been kissed by the sun. Coconut replaces the smell of the room and I don’t know if it’s her or the rum.”

I mean, every male barfly I’ve ever known has fallen for a barkeep. Now maybe I don’t hang out at beach bars and maybe I’m more likely to be drinking beer than rum, but I’m sure I’ve questioned whether the sweetness that’s encompassing my visit is biological or barley. Until it goes sideways and I know it’s the bitterness of the hops.

You know what I’ve never thought while going down on a woman? “Not too tart, not too sweet.”

Jimmy Buffett did a cover of “Toes,” the Zac Brown song quoted above. I love the subtle difference in their delivery. Zac Brown, still with lead in his pencil, stresses the bartender. “My bartender… she’s from the island…” and in the final quandary, he drawls out the “herrrrrr” with “or the rum” almost an afterthought.

Jimmy, however, sings the first part all together, punctuating “Island” before finishing wondering if it’s “her… or the RUM.”

I’m also not 100% sure, but I think Jimmy sings her body “is kissed by the sun,” a matter-of- face descriptor, instead of the original “has been kissed by the sun” which implies divine provenance. How Jimmy feels about the rum.

(Yes, i know he didn’t drink for the last twenty years of his life.)

I mentioned that when I heard “Bubbles Up,” I thought it was the most perfect sendoff for a guy who knew it would be released posthumously. In theory, it’s a scuba diving adage when you get disoriented in the weightless darkness. Follow the bubbles, because they always go toward the surface. “They will lead you to home, no matter how deep or how far you roam.” 

He knew a lot of his fans would feel disoriented and rudderless by the time they heard those lyrics. A near prefect send-off.

Then Zac Brown did one better. 

As soon as i saw the title, Pirates & Parrots, I knew exactly what it was, and had every inkling it was done well.

The song is about Jimmy Buffett heading off to the great beach in the sky. It’s littered with references to Jimmy Buffett songs, some as obvious as “where it’s always 5 o-clock” (despite that technically being an Alan Jackson song) others more obscure (salty rock, anchor down) only for those with the Aloha Shirt Secret Decoder Rings. 

The best part about “Pirates & Parrots” is how unabashed it is. It could’ve gone for generic sad song, it could’ve pussyfooted around with references so only a select few would get them and the rest would think it’s about something else entirely, like those who assume “Eyes Wide Open” is about a son being born, not a Born Again Christian anthem. After Kurt Cobain died, Eddy Vedder wrote a song that was clearly a goodbye, but whenever he was asked about it, he got defensive and avoided the topic. 

In contrast, “Pirates & Parrots” is literally a letter, a eulogy, to Jimmy Buffett. It says we’re missing him, that we’re trying our best to keep the world moving on, but that we’re looking forward to hearing more of his stories when we get wherever he is. Hell, the chorus starts with “So adios, my friend.” Can’t get much more on the nose than that. 

And the lyric “We’ll pick up where you left off” seems like a sincere mission statement. Zac Brown feels like it’s his job to carry the torch forward, to fill the void that’s been left. Somehow, I feel like if Kenny Chesney were to sing that exact same lyric, it would come across as, “Sweet, there’s a whole bunch of fans, and their money, newly available on the market.” Like a guy who’s willing to drive your drunk girlfriend home.

Again, it’s probably more of a me thing.

I had a chance to see them last summer. Both of them. And that’s why I passed.

I was checking Zac Brown’s website and saw they’d be playing the ginormous spaceship that is SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. It’s a venue that’s on my list, and what better time to go than to see a band I like but have never seen live. 

Something in the back of my mind was noting a slight incongruence, though. SoFi is huge. Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran play SoFi. Niche acts don’t. Hell, even Jimmy Buffett was more of an Arena guy than a Stadium guy, especially the biggest of stadiums. 

Then I heard Kenny Chesney was playing SoFi. And dammit, Zac Brown was opening for him. Not even a joint tour like Billy Joel and Elton John or Sting and Paul Simon. This was being billed as Kenny Chesney, with “special guest” Zac Brown.

Screw that! Sure, it would’ve meant that I could leave the concert early, maybe enjoy the evening in Los Angeles. But I didn’t want to contribute to Kenny Chesney’s ego, nor encourage him to smarm and swarm further into Parrothead turf. If I had faith everyone else in the stadium would’ve left when I did, I might’ve gone. Woulda been hilarious. But knowing the Parrotheads, too many of them would’ve been too drunk or stoned to coordinate it. 

Bummer. Guess I’m gonna have to wait until Zac Brown publishes tour dates for this year.

In the meantime, I’ll be heading off to see Nathaniel Rateliff in San Francisco next month. A guy who sings about drinking hard and making the most our of life. 

Seeing a trend? 

As Hip as Vinyl

· June 11, 2024 · Musings · , , , , , , , , , · No Comments

One of my favorite things about teaching economics is how approachable it is.

Never understood why most states wait until senior year to broach a system that most five-year-olds can figure out. You have a finite amount of money (or resources) and, as a result, you gotta choose what to use it for. How hard is that?

We’ve all experienced economics our whole life. For instance, most people are willing to pay more for things with utility, or usefulness, and convenience. Products that are less useful or convenient must be sold at a lower price or else consumers will substitute in the better…

I’m sorry, how much does that record player cost?

That’s, like, just a regular record player, right? The kind we were all too eager to move on from in the 1980s when snazzy new cassette technology came out?

It must be able to skip songs like CDs. Or flip the record over by itself? Oh, I’m sure it’s one of those faux items, made to look like it plays vinyl while in reality, you plug in a flash drive with MP3s.

No? it just plays vinyl records?

Sorry, where was I? Oh right, how intuitive economics is.

When most people hear “social science,” they think history, but when you actually think about the wording, it’s the study (“science”) of human interaction (“social”). And there is no more basic human interaction than “You make a product I want. This is how much I’m willing to pay for it.”

Like, for instance, you produce a record player. If this were 1970.

You see, the law of demand says that people want to pay as little as possible for a product. Unless it’s got the hipster badge of honor, evidently. And the law of supply says… well, I guess the law of supply is in full force here, because if dumbasses are willing to pay more for decades-old technology that’s been replaced by at least three generations of improved products, then sure, I’ll make as many of those damn things as you want.

Actually, there is one economic concept that helps explain the price of record players, which is a decrease in supply. As most companies move on to produce newer, better technology, there are only a few record players being produced. The small number of customers remaining are willing to pay more for the few remaining relics of the past. Maybe there are some warmed over hippies who want to play the vinyl collecting dust on the shelf for the entirety of this millennium. 

I can commiserate. I’ve got a crap-ton of VHS tapes that I’ll never get to watch again. Sure, I’ve repurchased the movies, but dammit, Daughter needs to understand that it wasn’t Hayden fucking Christensen under Darth Vader’s fucking helmet. In fact, when I showed her Star Wars the few scenes she tuned out to were the digital scenes added in the 1990s re-releases, which look so phony now. 

Star Wars aside, most of my VHS tapes are recordings of community theater shows and a couple high school projects I made with Rian Johnson that I could probably sell for a premium. Actually, scratch that, they’re terrible. The only person willing to pay me for them would be hush money from Rian himself. 

Pretty sure I own “WarGames” in at least three formats. Even though I swap most of the movies I show in class in and out of the rotation every few years when I get tired of watching them, “WarGames” has never fallen by the wayside. It’s still, in my mind, the definitive Cold War movie that is still approachable to students today. If anything, it’s become even more relevantthe last couple years with the debates over AI. As such, I know I at least have it on VHS and DVD, and probably BluRay (which I always seem to forget is different than DVD). I’ve also purchased it digitally on Amazon one year when my DVD player wasn’t working, because now that DVD players only cost $20, the planned obsolescence on them is about two weeks. 

Yes, I understand the irony of discussing planned obsolescence in the same post as $300 record players.

A decade or so ago, I hoped the, with digital, we could get beyond repurchasing the same title multiple times, but now we’re getting into the “must purchase on different platforms.” I thought I was being proactive when I burned all the good songs off my CDs back in the mid 2000s. Except I burned them via iTunes and now have an android. And now my laptop doesn’t have a CD drive to reburn them.

To say nothing of streaming companies pulling content they already own off their own platforms. At first, I was annoyed I’d bought all those early MCU titles on DVD when they were all now available on Disney+. But at some point, they’ll pull a Mysterious Benedict Society on the MCU and I’ll be happy I have those DVDs.

Assuming I can find a DVD player when that happens.

So yeah, I get the idea of producing a few bits of obsolete technology for those still stuck in yesteryear. 

But vinyl records are still being produced. By new bands. And they cost TWICE AS MUCH as a goddamn CD. 

I discovered all this after Daughter discovered Taylor Swift. She’s ten years old, which is the proper age for a Swifite. Unfortunately, there seem to be a handful of people over the age of twelve who are ruining the situation for the rest of us, meaning Taylor Swift concert tickets are a wee bit more expensive than Kidz Bop.

Following Taylor Swift is the ultimate form of purchasing the same item in multiple formats. In addition to the CDs and, yes, the vinyl, you have to buy the Taylor’s version of all the albums she’s redone, even if you bought the original album before she re-recorded them. And you’re expected to buy the albums she hasn’t re-recorded yet, preferably in multiple formats, with the knowledge that you will be buying them again when she re-records her own versions in another year or two. But only if she stays with Travis Kelce, because if they break up, she’ll write new music and not need to release another “Taylor’s version.”

Oh, and send some Spotify fees her way, too. 

So Daughter saved up her allowance for a few months to purchase a record player. Then she wanted to buy some vinyl. 

I was sorta game, because, call me old, but sometimes I miss listening to albums as they were intended. I get tired of telling Alexa or Pandora to play some Beatles only to find they don’t know that the second half of Abbey Road is supposed to be played continuously. Nothing’s more jarring than “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window” being in between “Please, Please Me” and “Here, There, and Everywhere.”

Daughter started with three Taylor Swift albums and I threw a couple Lake Street Dive albums because the whole family likes them, even though we mostly listen to them on Alexa. Haven’t been able to find Abbey Road yet, which is probably a good thing. It’s one thing to buy an album you already have on newer, better technology. It’s quite another to intentionally retrograde your version. 

The pricing of these records was where my belief in supply and demand totally shit the fan. There is no earthly reason they should cost twice, even three times, as much as CDs. At Barnes & Noble, the CD version of Taylor Swift’s Red was $18 or $19 and the vinyl was $45! And that’s Taylor’s version, where she’s getting 100% of the proceeds.

Back in the early 1990s, when they were brand new, CDs cost $15-20, while cassettes ran about $10 and vinyl was maybe a little less, because nobody was buying them. 

I remember being at a concert where the artist said CDs and cassettes cost the same amount to produce. The audience gasped. That artist, and others, were hoping to bring the price of CDs down. Instead, the industry responded by increasing the price of cassettes. That pretty much killed off cassettes, because, back before social media, people weren’t willing to pay more for worse technology.

They should’ve quadrupled the price. Then called cassettes “niche.”

Or waited a decade and used the term “vintage.”

Somehow CDs still cost about $15. Evidently they’ve never heard of inflation. Neither have video games. When I was buying piece-of-shit 8-bit games for my Intellivision or original NES, they set me back about $50. With a few exceptions, video games for a PS4 or PS5 stay mostly in that $40-50 range. The difference is that I only made $3.35 an hour back in the NES days, so I’d have to pretty much work a whole week to afford a video game. Now it’ll take me an hour. The same hour I just spent writing this blog while my students watched WarGames.

By that rationale, I could get four or five CDs an hour. But I don’t. I think I’ve purchased maybe ten CDs in the last ten years. Because even when I buy them, I just listen to their contents online, which doesn’t necessitate having the physical CD in my possession, not to mention finding something to play it on. My new car doesn’t even have a CD player anymore. 

As a result there are fewer CD shops. And fewer CD player shops. Seriously, how the hell is Best Buy still in business?

That’s called a decrease in demand. Fewer people purchase a product, fewer of the product are produced, and the price drops. Or, in this case, the price stays the same despite thirty years of inflation. 

That memo that hasn’t hit vinyl. Oh, the quantity available has certainly dropped, which makes it annoying to look for anything other than Taylor Swift, a couple of country stars, and maybe Led Zeppelin. Seriously, the Barnes and Noble had about ten copies of various Zeppelin records. Of all the questions I have about today’s vinyl customers, I really, really, really want to know who is just now, in 2024, desiring to purchase Zeppelin IV on vinyl.

For $30.

I know, I know. I sound like a broken record here.  

But hey, at least Millennials and Gen Zs will finally know what it means to sound like a broken record. My students always thought it was a good thing, referring to broken records in sports. But it’s a Michael Jackson reference, not a Michael Jordan reference. Not that they know who either of those people are. Sorry, I sound like a Taylor Swift broken record, not a Travis Kelce broken record.

Since we purchased the record player and records, wanna know Daughter’s preferred way to listen to Taylor Swift? On Alexa. Or YouTube. They’re so much more convenient.

And what is the record player doing? Sitting there on the shelf gathering dust, just like it was 1986 up in this bitch.

So sure, people, convince yourself that those cracks and hisses are “essential to the music” and pay a premium for it. 

Then go listen to it digitally.

Because you know what I’ve never heard anybody say when leaving a concert?

Damn! Why no crackles?

New York with Family, the Personal Stuff

· July 12, 2022 · Musings · , , , , , , · One Comment

A few weeks ago, we took my eight-year-old daughter to New York for a trip originally planned before the pandemic. In my last post, I wrote about the touristy stuff we did, like Statue of Liberty and Coney Island. This post will delve more into the personal things, the people and oddities we encountered that you won’t exactly be able to book through a travel agent.

Concert Upgrade

While in New York and Boston, we did two concerts and a Broadway show. The show was Aladdin, which was neither great nor terrible. There isn’t much chance for surprise from a show that follows a 30-year-old movie beat by beat. Unlike the Frozen musical, which adds a song, “Hygge,” that might be better than any in the original movie, the only songs worth knowing in Aladdin are all from the movie. The magic carpet ride, however, was pretty fucking cool. Daughter was mostly “meh” throughout the first act, but when everything went dark and the carpet took off, she couldn’t lean forward enough.

The second concert we went to was Lake Street Dive in Boston. I’ll review it in my normal year-end post. Normal as in “every year up until 2019.” Pretty sure that’s the dictionary definition now. Normal (adj): occurring regularly prior to 2020.” We also spent a few days at the Great Wolf Lodge, an experience which will get its own addendum after I post these two New York writings, because I’ve got a LOT to say about that juvenile bacchanal. 

But the first concert we saw was Billy Joel, performing his 80th “straight” show in his Madison Square Garde “residency.” I don’t know how it qualifies as a residency if it’s only one show a month. I also question the designation of “80 straight,” for which they raised a banner to the rafters next to those of the Knicks and Rangers. After all, we originally had tickets for a Billy Joel concert at the Garden in June, 2020 that didn’t happen. Perhaps “residency with 80 straight concerts” is just a fancy way for Billy Joel to say, “I ain’t coming to your town, you’ve got to come to mine.”Not that I’m knocking it. If I could just roll out of bed once a month for my job, sign me up. On second thought, Billy Joel is over 70. I sure as shit hope I’m not still teaching then, even if it’s only once a month.

Billy Joel is known for giving away his front row seats. He got tired of looking into the audience and only seeing super richies who didn’t give a shit about the concert. Next time you watch a baseball game, check out how many people behind home plate aren’t watching the game. So Billy Joel sends his band members and/or security out into the crowds before the concert starts and hands out front row upgrades. That way, not only does he get a “real fan” who was willing to see him from a half-mile away, but he also gets a real fan who is super excited to no longer be seeing him from a half-mile away.

Evidently, now that it’s a well known practice, many fans go to the shows looking for the undercover ticket people. Then they loudly talk about how excited they are to have these Row ZZZ tickets to see their FAVORITE artist of ALL TIME. With signs to boot.

I was not one of those people. I was just a dumbass tourist trying to figure out how to get up to the nosebleeds of an arena I’d never been in before. We were supposed to be on the fourth floor (which, oddly, is beneath the third floor) behind the stage. The fourth floor, or I suppose I should call it the 400s section, only exists in one area of the arena, only accessible by one set of stairs. It isn’t by any arena entrance and isn’t referenced on many of the signs showing people where to go to find their more plentiful sections. 

“I think we’re up here,” I said to my family when we found a random staircase in the general section of the arena where I thought our seats were. I’m still not entirely sure the staircase was marked with the sections it led to.

I’m not entirely sure what the guy in the suit first said as Daughter barreled past him. It was something along the lines of “Why are you going up there?” Although it might’ve been more directed, like “You don’t wanna go up there” or “That’s the wrong direction.”

Still completely obtuse, I responded something like, “We’re in section 413,” showing him my phone.

“No, you don’t want those seats. Do you want to sit somewhere closer? “

At this point, I’m thinking the guy is trying to swindle us. Been to far too many ballgames where the “I need tickets” guy is 50 yards away from the “I’ve got tickets” guy. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I slowly realized that, wait a second, we’re already inside the arena. Not the smartest place to engage in ticket scalping when all your customers already have tickets. Like the T-Rex at the Natural History Museum waking up from a nap in the tar pits,  I remember we are at a Billy Joel concert, and Billy Joel is famous for…

Fortunately, Wife was much quicker in the uptake. “We’d love better seats. We came all the way from California and it’s her-,” puts hands on Daughter’s head,  “first concert. She loves Billy Joel.”

(Never mind that Daughter’s way more excited about Lake Street Dive in a couple of days and, while she does know most of his songs, is mainly just tagging along for this leg of the journey.)

“Are you okay with her being in the floor?” the guy asks. 

Are you fucking kidding me? Of fucking course she’s fine sitting on the fucking floor and if she isn’t, then she best be shutting the fuck up about it right the fuck now. We paid $100 for these tickets and were about to be sitting in $1000 seats. 

Remember that whole thing about wanting excited fans in the front row? I think my last comment is what he’s going for. 

Of course, once we had the tickets, we had no fucking clue where to go. We returned to the spot at the bottom of the stairs to ask the guy, but he was gone. They’ve got to keep moving. As soon as attendees see other random attendees being handed tickets, the swarm is on. After our exchange, we heard other people muttering, “No, it’s usually a lady, but this time it’s a guy in a suit. Look for a guy in a black suit.”

Eventually, three elevators and four or five confused ushers (“Those are floor seats. What are you doing up here in the nose bleeds?”), we finally made our way to the floor. The last usher knew the score. “Hey, you’ve been upgraded!” 

So anyway, on the left is a picture of where our original seats were. Third row, right above the Bud Light sign. The picture on the right is the view from our actual seats. Not bad for $110 on the secondary market, huh?

In the past, Billy Joel was criticized for having hot women in the front row. He explained that he gave the tickets to his band members and roadies to hand out to whoever they thought would be good for the front row and, well, guess who they want looking back at them? Not a couple approaching their fifties with an eight-year-old who kinda sorta knows some of the songs. 

I assume Billy Joel has adjusted who gets to hand out tickets, and presumably now that he’s playing the same spot every month, he’s switching up who hands out the goods. That’s why the other fans expected a woman. And clearly the guy who gave us the tickets wasn’t going to be staring into our bosoms for the whole concert. Billy Joel now has a daughter close to my daughter’s age, so maybe there are general instructions to find families with kids. Or maybe it’s just to look for the numbnuts who clearly have no idea what they’re doing. That fit us to a T. 

Either way, Daughter’s has a lifetime of concert disappointment in front of her after getting front row at Madison Square Garden for her first.

Hotel Bathroom

I’ve got to save a few column inches to discuss the bathroom at our hotel. Not that I have any clue what the fuck was going on in said bathroom. I assume it had something to do with New York being visited by many Europeans, so maybe it’s what happens when you translate bathroom into metric? I know it fucked up the Hubble Telescope. And I might’ve been able to see alien galaxies with the contraptions in there, if only I could figure out how to use them.

First up was Toilet 2.0. What’s that? You didn’t think toilets could grow sentient? 

Of course, it had a bidet. That’s to be expected if you cater to foreigners. I’ve dealt with them before, and by “dealt with them,” I mean I’ve largely ignored them because, thankfully I’ve never used a toilet that was bidet only, like many bathrooms give you no paper towel option, only air dryers. How did Covid not do away with those germ spreaders? Every person leaving a dryer-only bathroom is still shaking water from their hands. 

While I didn’t use this bidet, I did at least take note of it. It’s got your normal settings for back wash and front wash. The person requesting the front wash looks suspiciously female, which would seem to be a no-no these days. There’s also an option for soft or hard, which makes sense on the back end. Some visits require more aftermath, if you know what I mean. Although I don’t know how a bidet user knows which visit is which. I usually need to check the damage on the TP to know how the rest of the visit will go.

What strikes me most about this bidet is that you can program in two user profiles. What is there to do beyond front or back, hard or soft? I’m trying to think of the person who has a specific bidet method that requires a complex procession and progression through the four options, such that they must save the profile. Add to that the fact that this is a hotel, so you’re really only using this bidet for a few days. And he’s probably still wiping when he’s out and about. Oh, and he’s got someone else in this very hotel room that needs their own super secret, super special progression of H2O up the Wazoo.

More unusual than the programmable bidet, however, was that it appeared to be a self-cleaning toilet. Not in the manner of a self-cleaning oven or coffee maker, where you can set it to a cycle. More like a Hal-9000, Terminator gaining sentience style of self-cleaning. Every time one of us walked in the room, we would hear the water running. Not like a full flush or anything, but a trickle of water, a sprinkling, like a pre-lubrication of the bowl. 

At first we worried that it would run all night, but it seemed tied to movement. It ran even if we kept the light off. So now my toilet is taking notes of how often I’m visiting. Should I expect an introductory email from my friendly neighborhood proctologist by the time I return home? 

Oh yeah, and the seat was warm. At first I thought I was imaging it, but Wife and Daughter confirmed. It was like the car seat warmers, except that those can be turned on and off. The toilet seat was on ALL the time. Sometimes when I’m back from walking Central Park on a muggy June day in New York, I might want to deposit funds in the porcelain bank without scalding my sack.

Considering the damn thing had AI and enough energy to power a nuclear power plant, it isn’t surprising that this toilet came with an extensive list of rules and regulations, a standard list of dos and don’ts to avoid liability when it leaves the hotel room to kill Sarah Connor. 

The list took up the entire inside of the lid, and while I didn’t read all the terms and conditions before accepting (I had to pee, after all), I noted the first warning, which was “Don’t get water inside.” Um… it’s s toilet. Do… do they not know how toilets work? It takes some water to help alleviate the skid marks. Because even after an overnight of self cleaning, they were still noticeable. 

Next to the toilet was a shower that had not two, nor three, but FOUR shower heads. None of which were a standard shower head.  First up was a hand held wand, like an old game show microphone with the water coming out the sides. Then you had the overhead waterfall spigot. We’ve got one in our house and I don’t fucking get it. Who the hell wants the water to be dumping down on them from above? Such that,  if any of your skin gets merely a splash of water,  your entire body is also drenched. How does one lather up or apply shampoo?

The final two shower heads were in the wall, one about chest height and the other at my thigh. They were adjustable to a point, but their sprays were still only able to make it up to my chin and waist, respectively. The spray also maxed out maybe two feet from the wall, with a force equivalent to a water fountain. Not enough to rinse off my armpits or undercarriage, two spots I also couldn’t hit from the overhead. And the microphone came out with too much force for the giblets. 

There was only one handle to control all four spigots. Turn it a little bit and you’ll have both microphone and wall. Go too far and you’ll cycle back around to the waterfall. Another handle controlled the temperature, but it didn’t matter, because all four started out frigid. 

By day three I figured out how to conduct a masterpiece like I was a few blocks over at Carnegie Hall. Use the wall to get wet, use the microphone to rinse off. Try not to teabag the wall. Turn the microphone on to wet the hair, then off while I shampoo, then back on to rinse. Avoid the third rail of the waterfall faucet at all costs. 

Do I get a doctorate at Columbia for figuring all that out? 

Random Thoughts

1. Daughter doesn’t know what cigarettes are. Not sure if this is a sign that we’ve parented well or poorly. Maybe it says more about the times. She thinks she knows what cigarettes are, but what she’s actually smelling is marijuana. She doesn’t like the smell, and she doesn’t encounter it often, but now that I think of it, she probably encounters it a hell of a lot more often than cigarettes. I mean, who smokes tobacco anymore? Anyway, whenever she smelled weed (and trust me, it’s all over the place in New York, and that’s coming from a California guy), she’d plug her nose and whine, “Ugh, really? Why do people have to smoke cigarettes here, too?” I’ll be curious to see what she calls it if she ever smells a legitimate cigarette.

2. On our first day in New York, after checking into the 44th floor of our hotel, Daughter looked out the window at the 57th Street abomination. Not sure if you’ve seen it, but it looks like a damn pole. It only takes up maybe 100 feet by 100 feet of real estate, but then shoots up 90-odd floors. The top floors aren’t finished yet and are currently on the market for $180 million. What a bargain. Anyway, when she saw it, she asked, “Is that a skyscraper? I’ve heard of them, but I’ve never seen one.” Bear in mind she’s visited her aunt in San Francisco no fewer than twenty times. And did I mention we were on the 44th floor of our own hotel? Not sure what them kids are calling skyscrapers these days. 

3. She ended up being fine with the subway, but her only complaint was that it should be more like Disneyland. Shouldn’t everything? But what she was specifically looking for was the part of the Disneyland train where you go through the dinosaurs and Native American lands. I mean, what good is an underground train system that transports you miles closer to where you need to go for three dollars if it doesn’t also have some racist animatronics?

4. In my whole trip, three people jumped out at me that I needed to note. First was the lady wearing her Miller High Life t-shirt to see Aladdin. Look, I know it’s a show for kids and all, but it is a Broadway theater. She couldn’t upgraded to her nice MGD shirt? Second was the dude wearing a “Don’t California My Texas” t-shirt. At the Statue of Liberty. In New York, which is neither Texas nor California and probably doesn’t want us apply either of the latter two locations to their former. 

Third was the guitar dude at the Imagine mosaic in Central Park near the Dakota building where Lennon lived and was shot. Seems it used to be a quiet, contemplative spot, but the last two times I’ve been, it’s a spot for selfies and self-important douchebags who bust out their accoustics for poor renditions of Beatles songs that nobody requested, as if two of them being dead wasn’t bad enough. Anyway, when we walked by this time, Dude was playing “Get Back,” which… um… is a Paul McCartney song? Under normal circumstances I might not critique a guy for not knowing that John had nothing to do with the writing or performance of that song, but Peter Jackson just made a nine-hour documentary, that anybody with the audacity to think they deserve to play their own instrument at a John Lennon memorial ought to have seen, which showed “Get Back” being created from scratch while John was still sleeping off a heroin hangover. 

5. Last time I was in New York, I made sure to have pizza from Lombardi’s, the first pizzeria in America. This time I added a few more iconic food items: cheesecake from Junior’s and a hot dog from Nathan’s. I mistakenly thought Junior’s was the cheesecake referenced in Guys and Dolls, but apparently that’s Lindy’s, which has closed. Good thing, too, because the cheesecake was just kinda meh. It wasn’t bad, per se, but it didn’t have much flavor to it. It was sweeter than I expected, more cream than cheese. I’ve had plenty of better cheesecakes in my life.

The Nathan’s, on the other hand, was solid. I’ve had a ton of Nathan’s dogs at various establishments, but the ones at the original location are different. They grill the buns, which the ones in the mall don’t. They also seem longer and thinner than the ones you find in the store, and the griddling (not boiling or grilling) is uniform and thorough. My only regret was standing in the long line with the people who wanted burgers or who knew they served clams, before I realized there was a hot dog express lane where I could’ve got my dog and fries twenty minutes earlier.

6. I don’t mean to criticize these photo op guys in Times Square, but…
*Hulk needs to work out a bit. You wouldn’t like me when I get a beer belly.
*Spiderman, a secret identity does no good if you stand around with your mask off the whole time.
*Grodd is a DC property, not a Marvel property. Shouldn’t be hanging out with Avengers. Oh wait, is that supposed to be King Kong? Dude, he doesn’t even HAVE a comic book title.

7. I only found one sign to add to my collection. If you’ve followed my other travelbolg posts, you know I love signs that are a little too cutesy or on-the-nose. The sign on this particular trip that amused me was neither of those. In fact, the only thing I enjoyed about it was a missing letter. 

Sure, I know it’s really just a room. But am I alone in thinking a luggage storage ‘roo would be much better? I mean, it already has a pouch. And then when I’m finally able to get in my room, it can just hop them up there for me instead of making me do the schlepping my own shit after hours of walking around Central Park after minimal sleep on a red-eye. Imagine my disappointment when it was only a closet manned by a human being. I guess I’ll swap the tip for a smaller bill.

I probably need to visit Sydney to find an actual Luggage Storage ‘Roo.

First Concert of the 2020s

· May 14, 2022 · Musings · , , , , , · One Comment

After more than two years away, I ventured into a super-spreader event.

Sorry, I meant a concert. Damn you, autocorrect!

Trust me, I’ve been to plenty of super-spreaders. Most of them included forty-five hormonal teenagers thinking their masks are supposed to go on their chin, not live music.

Oddly enough, the hormonal teenagers are STILL wearing masks around their chins, even after the mask mandate expired. I guess it’s the new version of wearing conservative clothes when you leave the house then going full goth. Their parents think they’re wearing the masks. But if that’s the case, why not put it in your pocket when you get to school?

Sorry. Concert. Right. A friend of mine texted me on a Monday night, asking if I wanted to go to a concert two days later. Seeing as the ticket said 7:00 show, I thought that sounded like a capital idea. I should be home by, what, 9:30? 10:00 at the latest.

Midnight?!?

Turns out the doors opened at 7:00. And they had this thing called a, what was it, opening band? I guess I’m out of practice.

In addition to getting my sea legs back, this was a band I didn’t know many songs from. I had heard of them, and when I checked YouTube, I recognized a few of the songs, so it’s not like I was totally flying blind. But it turns out there’s a difference between being marginally aware of a band’s songs and knowing (and singing along to) every fucking lyric, which described roughly every other human being in the place. It felt really awkward when the lead singer pointed at us to finish the chorus and all I could do was mouth some bullshit. Reminded me of the Apostle’s Creed back in my Catholic days. Did I miss the week when Catechism covered the Airborne Toxic Event?

That was the name of the band we saw, by the way. The Airborne Toxic Event. With special guest Mondo Cozmo. In case you’ve forgotten, as I clearly had, “special guest” means opening act. That band goes on at 8:00, not the 7:00 printed on the ticket, and the band you’re there to see, or that your friend is dragging you to see, won’t be on for another ninety minutes.

My friend invited me because his son, who was the original owner of the extra ticket, had dutifully cleared a night in June of 2020, not April of 2022. He might have been able to make the makeup date March of 2021, but hat didn’t happen, either. In the intervening two years, he’d dropped out of college, had a kid, and started working construction. He (perhaps wisely) didn’t want to attend a late concert then wake up for work the next day. Instead, his twenty-year-old ass makes the two pushing-fifty guys do the late night thing. What am I missing here? Isn’t that what being twenty is all about? I remember overnight trips to Reno (without a hotel) that ended with me getting home just long enough to shower and head into work with no sleep.

Then again, I didn’t have a toddler till I was forty.

Or maybe April, 2022

The concert was almost pushed off again. The week prior to our show, they had to cancel another thrice-rescheduled show in Southern California because somebody on their bus tested positive. Fortunately, he got the negative test before the Sacramento show.

Are the 2020s maybe not the best time for a band named “The Airborne Toxic Event?” If any new Covid cases are traced back to their concert, the headlines might become confusing.

The venue they were playing was one I’d always been curious to attend, which helped counteract my reluctance to miss sleep. It caters to bands that don’t cater to people my age. Bands with names like Goth After Dark or Dub Stars or Guadalupe Hidalgo. Or Gwar.

Holy shit, Gwar is playing there Memorial Day Weekend! I’m super curious about the clientele at a Gwar show. They were already an obscure joke back in 1990. So it’s got to be a slew of fifty-somethings that never really got the joke. I’m tempted to buy a ticket for crowd watching, but the bastards would probably expect me to sing along with their choruses.

The venue is tiny. And crowded. Hopefully Whitesnake never plays there, because any errant pyrotechnics and we weren’t getting out. As it stood, I couldn’t even leave my spot to grab another beer. I might not make it back. Not that I wanted any more beer, because it would be four hours before I left the confines, and who the hell goes to the bathroom during a concert? I might miss the lyrics.

Wait, are they saying, “Like gasoline”? That’s what it sounded like on maybe the fifth iteration. I guess that’s a cool lyric. I think the line referenced making out when they were seventeen. It rhymes. And, you know, gasoline is explosive. Fire equals passion. Just ask creepy elder statesman Bruce Springsteen and his “Hey little girl, is your daddy home?” Or Whitesnake.

Maybe this band isn’t too bad.

Two people in my close vicinity passed out. We’re all out of practice.

Oddly enough, the pass outs happened not during the concert while people were jumping around, but in between the opening band and the main event. The first lady to pass out was one of the only ones wearing a mask. 

Did I mention super-spreader event? 

Not too surprising. It was stuffy as hell and people were jockeying for position, despite the fact that nobody in the entire venue was more than twenty feet from the stage. And I know we’re only supposed to mock people who claim that it’s harder to breathe while wearing a mask, but I imagine that when five hundred people are jostling around you, the mask can’t be doing wonders. It was hard enough for me to catch a full breath, and my nose and mouth were wide open. Each inhalation contained about 85% body odor. Plus 15% Covid.

Her mask fluxed in and out heavily a couple times, then her eyes fluttered and she did the standard pirouette before being caught by her companion, also wearing a mask. The crowd was nice enough to part to let him pull her out. As long as you’re going away from the stage, you’re golden. Five people moved into the spot she vacated.

I suppose I should thank this particular canary for reminding me I was in a coalmine. After she went down, I remembered to bend my knees more often. Flex those calf muscles! But after four hours of standing in more or less the same spot, my feet still felt like they’d gone 25,000 steps. You know what’s nice about seeing Classic Rockers in arenas and stadiums? Assigned seating!

The second fainter fell a couple minutes before the band came on. His pass-out was the more pedestrian, self-inflicted style. No mask near his mouth, but he did have a beer, and it clearly wasn’t his first. And “near his mouth” was the closest he came. He couldn’t quite find it. When he faceplanted toward the back of the woman’s head, somebody else grabbed him and stood him back up. At first I thought they were together, but second dude might’ve just been a good Samaritan. Drunkie then sways backward, toward said Samaritan.

When security came around, Samaritan held his hand up, signalling toward the drunkard like a plane’s flying over his deserted island for the first time in a decade. Security was already looking for the drunkard, which was impressive because as far as I knew, the guy had just shown up. Maybe they’ve got us all under strict surveillance. We didn’t have to show our vaccination card because they’re already monitoring our biorhythms from the 5g DNA sequencing that Bill Gates put into our bodies!

Sir Sways-a-Lot didn’t put up a fight. I don’t even think he knew they were ushering him away, nor whether he was at a concert in the first place. Security used the “hey buddy” approach instead of “Respect my Authori-TAY!” and dude was easily led toward the back. For good measure, he took one more sip from the IPA while following along. Not so much rebellion as inertia.

Good Samaritan immediately took two steps forward to take the vacated spot.

How was the band? Not sure. You might want to check with someone who knew what they were seeing. They had a viola player. Or maybe it was a violin. Perhaps even a fiddle. When she wasn’t on the strings, she played the keyboard. But then when she was playing violin, other members of the band stopped playing guitar and went over to play the lonely keyboards. By the end of the concert, that thing had more people tickling its ivory than your mom.

The opening act was also impressive. Much like Jethro Tull, I don’t know if Mondo Cosmo was a person or the whole band. Unlike Jethro Tull, nobody named Mondo Cosmo invented a seed drill. The guitar player was great. Drummer, too. But in looking at this guy’s/band’s videos online, it’s clear that, Mondo Cosmo or not, Mondo Cosmo is the only guy who gets camera time. 

He’s pretty hard core. Every bit the Mondo. Seemed way more comfortable on the songs he was jumping around the stage than on the songs he had to sit still and play rhythm guitar. I feel like he’s either going to make it big or flame out very, very hard. I’m rooting for the former.

The drawback of the band was that they had way too much pre-recorded backing tracks. It took me a number of songs to figure out where the hell the bass was coming from. Was he behind the curtain? Was the lead guitar busting out low notes on the thick strings when he wasn’t in solo mode. Once I realized the bass was still going while he was soloing, I realized it was all a ruse. 

Then they did a cover of “Bittersweet Symphony.” I knew for a FACT there was no string section in the three-man band.

Did you know you could jump around the stage and headbang to “Bittersweet Symphony”? Although, as a general rule, you shouldn’t get more into another band’s songs than your own. 

I don’t want to give away too much, because for the first time sine 2019, I can have a year-end concert review. I’ve got tickets bought for at least one more, with potential plans for as many as three more. When it rains, it pours.

I just had to make sure I got that “your mom” joke in before I forgot it.

On the Cutting Edge of Music

· October 6, 2021 · Musings · , , , , , , · 3 Comments

I’ve been going down some obscure musical rabbit holes of late, and, contrary to my norm, I’ve found something newer than “Go Ask Alice.” So I figured I’d let y’all know about a couple of bands that I might be on the cutting edge of. At least in America.

The first is a couple of lasses from England. Or maybe one of the other UK countries? Hell, they could be Irish for all I know. 

Yes, despite being American, I’m aware that Ireland’s been independent for a century or so. My last name’s Kelly, after all. I even know that Jameson’s a Catholic Whiskey and Bushmill’s belongs to the heathens. (Although I kinda like Bushmill’s a little more – don’t tell my dead aunt).

Anyway, I first came across Wet Leg when somebody posted their video on Twitter. As far as I can tell, they only have one or maybe two songs. Like I said, cutting edge stuff. Not like the last time I found “new” bands (Vampire Weekend and Nathaniel Rateliff) that turned out to have a decade of back catalogs. 

But, boy howdy, Wet Leg’s one song is pretty kick ass.

Check out the video.

Tongue in cheek lyrics, driving bass line, kick-ass guitar riffs. Count me in.

Most will note the lyric from the first refrain, “I went to school and I got the Big D.” Despite her taking the time to explain otherwise, I don’t think she’s referencing her degree. But I’ll  take the third verse: “Is your mother worried? Would you like us to assign someone to worry your mother.” That’s some Grade A mirth right there. Or maybe Grade Big D, as the case may be.

Not to be overlooked is the refrain of “Excuse me… what?” In the recorded version, the “what?” is restrained. But if you check out a live version (go ahead, I’ll wait), there’s more emotion to the second one each time. As in, “What the fuck? I already responded the first time.” Because how else does someone respond when someone interrupts you twice with the same “Excuse me” without getting on to whatever the hell they’re excusing? Come to my classroom sometime and see. The name I respond to most often is Mr. Um, Um, Mr. Um.

I’m so enamored with the smirkiness that I’m overlooking the obvious faux pas of mispronouncing the song’s title. I mean, come on, it’s clearly a chaise LOUNGE, not a chaise longue. We lounge upon it, do we not? Is this some European versus American thing? Are those limey bastards siding with the French? A faux pas indeed! 

Please pronounce that phonetically, not that “foe pa” bullshit. A fox pass whilst waiting for our whore’s deo weevers.

I looked up chaise longue and chaise lounge. Both are accepted. Whereas the definition for chaise longue, which first appeared in 1800, is a “long, reclining chair.” The definition for chaise lounge, from 1804, is “a chaise longue.” Meaning as soon as that word started being used, we fixed its pronunciation. Yay, ‘Murica!

You can learn so much from a neo-punk song! Now where’s my Big D?

Lyrics aren’t enough to warrant more than one or two re-listens, though. You gotta have great music. 

I didn’t come by that “neo-punk” designation randomly. The first time I heard the song, my mind immediately went to early Police. Back when they were shit-kicking pseudo-anarchists. Not Sting’s easy-listening “phase,” which has lasted longer than three decades. I’m talking about “I Can’t Stand Losing You” and “So Lonely.” “I guess you’d call it suicide, but I’m too full to swallow my pride.” If that doesn’t sound like assigning someone to butter your muffin, I don’t know what does.

Not to mention, those bass and guitar riffs could give late-1970s Sting and Andy Summers a run for their money.

When I first played the song for Wife, she went a different route. Not The Police, but The Go-Go’s. At first I thought she was being a little sexist, until she narrowed down her comparison. “The bassline is from “Our Lips are Sealed.” And holy shit if she isn’t right. Go ahead, listen again. I’ll wait. Give that bad boy more YouTube views. Do you hear it now? It could be “We Got the Beat,” too. Maybe an amalgamation of both. Drums and beat from one, progression from the other? Certainly not a straight rip-off, but in the same vein. 

While the Go-Go’s seem like quaint bubble gum 1980’s pop to a modern listener, an all-female band was cutting edge at the time. Similarly, if your first thought when you hear Sting is the tantric singer of a homoerotic trio with Rod Stewart and Bryan Adams, it might be hard to conceive of him as front and center in the avant garde, but that’s where they were.

Unlike the Go-Go’s, Wet Leg has dudes in their band. Or maybe they just do backup when they’re playing live. Not sure. Another band I’ve recently found, Lake Street Dive, also seem to be fronted by two women (only one sings, the other plays a kick-ass stand-up bass) with dudes playing percussions and keyboards and whatnot. It’s a trend I’m enjoying.

Uh oh, should I talk about Lake Street Dive? Three new bands? Nah, they’ve already got at least one bona fide hit. They don’t need my help. (But, if you’re curious, here ya go.)

Regardless of which punk Wet Leg is reminiscent of, Wife and I both agreed that “Chaise Longue” belongs firmly in 1982. And that’s a great thing.

Can there perhaps be another Bertie Higgins on the horizon?

After all, over in Russia, they’re fusing together 1990s dance music with 1970s fashion and, uh… Spanglish?

Let me tell you about the band called Little Big.

First of all, these guys aren’t new. They’ve been around for close to a decade, and if YouTube and Wikipedia are to be believed, their videos have millions of views.  But at least on this side of the Atlantic, they’re still what we’d call “niche.”

They have so many entertaining videos that it’s hard to know where to start. But let’s go with the big one, which by all rights could have and should have won Eurovision 2020.

A decade ago, I might need to delve into a doctoral thesis on Eurovision, but it feels like it’s mainstream enough that most Americans are at least aware of it. Nothing like a Will Farrell movie to get some increased exposure. 

For those unaware, each European country sends one new song to a continent-wide competition. In May, all those bands “perform” their songs, then the entire continent calls in votes a la American Idol (except you can’t vote for your own country). The country that wins Eurovision gets to host the competition the following year. Not very socialist, but whatever.

Have you ever noticed that the European sports leagues are cut-throat capitalistic while the American ones do shit like revenue sharing and salary caps? Kinda odd. Maybe that’s a post for another time.

Speaking of differences twixt two sides of the Atlantic, I don’t understand why we can’t do something similar to Eurovision here. Sure, West Virginia and Wyoming might have trouble putting together a bona fide song played by talented musicians, but if you’ve seen the average Moldova entry, I think Wyoming would be fine. 

(JK. I love the Moldova entries. Come for Epic Sax Guy, stay for a lady riding around stage on a unicycle in a dunce hat. I’ll take twenty Moldova entries over one overly warbled French ballad.)

In 2020, the preliminary rounds, where the individual countries vote for who will represent them, had already occurred before the world ended. So we can see all the videos and performances we might have expected if May, 2020 had existed in a standard timeline. In the running was a quirky Icelandic band who all wear aqua sweaters with 8-bit-animation versions of themselves. Evidently Geek Culture loves them. Britain was planning its usual phone-it-in performance of a boring pop song. It’s better than their nudge-nudge, wink-wink song featuring flight attendants asking if we wanted something to suck on for landing. The country that gave us the Beatles, Stones, and Zeppelin (to say nothing of Coldplay, Radiohead, and Mumford) only shows up to Eurovision for the participation trophy. 

Then there was Little Big’s “Uno.”

Sadly, when Eurovision came back around in 2021, the songs that were supposed to be in the 2020 competition were not allowed. The rules state that songs must be released in the calendar year of the competition and somehow, those assholes didn’t amend the rules for a global pandemic. The European Soccer Championship and the Olympics both saw fit to keep the 2020 designation while in 2021, but a competition that sometimes features stripper poles and glowing ass cheeks making smiley faces needs to maintain some standards, amiright?

So unfortunately, Little Big’s “Uno” never made it to the voting stage. I think it’s fair to say that, despite five million deaths, a year spent without seeing loved ones, a generation of children unable to engage in social interactions (or math), the untold suicides and mental breakdowns, not to mention the still-unknown long COVID effects, the generation of children unable to learn social interactions (or math), that THIS tragedy, the cancellation of Little Big’s performance upon the Eurovision stage, is the worst thing COVID took from us

Before I do the link for the video, I must warn you. They’re a Russian band that sings in English. Except for when they’re counting, which is n Spanish. Minus the number three.

Oh, and evidently in Russia it’s still 1978.

Don’t worry about Putin getting pee tapes of you for watching the video. It’s been viewed 216 million times. Only about a million came from me. And if Putin’s seen me pee that many times, he should be blind by now.

Ready? Here you go

Did I forget to mention you’ll never be able to unsee it? Oops. My bad. 

In case you’re wondering, the fat guy does those moves when they perform it live, too. Because if you’re like me, you thought, “Yeah, I could do that move. Once.”

Beyond that, I really don’t know what jumps out the most in that video. The first time I saw it (hell, the first ten times I saw it), I could only stare, agape. Somewhere around viewing number twenty, I began formulating questions. Is that a tattoo of a bear peeking through his very translucent shirt? And what’s the deal with the dude’s black lips? It’s like reverse blackface. Is that still offensive? And how the hell do they do that thing with their legs? All while keeping a straight face.

But similar to Wet Leg, once you get past the gimmicks of the video, the music’s pretty good. It helps to have a proclivity toward 1990s dance music in the vein of La Bouche and Real McCoy. There were a few musical movements in that decade that I feel didn’t overstay their welcome. Those brief flirtations with swing and ska and dance were fun. I might not want to listen to them all the time, but I’ll take that over fifty bands chasing the same sound all day, every day.

Shit, remember when Tony Bennett was “hip” for, like, a minute? Did that really happen?  Maybe I was just taking better drugs back then.

A good further introduction to what Little Big are all about is the song “Hypnodancer.” In the video, they rob various underground casinos by hypnotizing all the other players with his dance moves. Except they’re playing Uno instead of poker. And they’re smoking and/or snorting those mini pencils you normally find at bowling alleys or mini golf. At the end, they encounter another hypnodancer and have to decide if they will compete or combine forces (which includes lots of two dudes pelvic thrusting each other).

Not all their music is as catchy as “Uno,” and some of their videos miss the mark, but dammit if they aren’t trying.

I might or might not have introduced some of my classes to Little Big. Sure, when the lead singer sashays around in “Uno,” he’s holding the microphone at a very phallic angle, but it’s far more appropriate than some pseudo-sexual limey winking at us while asking if we’d like some salty nuts. Little Big has a song called “Sex Machine” that’s actually about as tame as “Love Machine,” which has been in the zeitgeist for close to fifty years.

I now have students coming in to tell me when a new Little Big video is being released. Of the recent additions, our favorite was “Mustache,” a beach mystery wherein all the women have mustaches, but two of them, jealous of another woman’s award-winning facial hair, shave it off and steal it. Then it’s up to the usual Bear Tattoo and Black Lips guy, clad in 1920s era lifeguard uniforms, to “solve the crime” by finding a bevvy of razors. 

Quality. And the music’s fun, too.

We all were a little disappointed by their latest entry, “Turn It Up.” It’s really just people jumping up and down a lot. Maybe the next one will be better, since Little Big seems fit to keep entertaining.

There are a few of their songs I won’t show my students. Even if it’s being performed sarcastically, songs about drinking and/or body parts are still a no-no. Tongue in cheek is fine. Stick that tongue anywhere else and I might get in trouble. But I’ll show “Uno” and “Hypnodancer” all day, every day.

That being said, their tribute to last year deserves a special mention. It’s called “Suck My Dick 2020.” At first I thought this was on par with “Don’t Stand So Close to Me ’86.” You know, a remake of their previous song, named “Suck My Dick,” using their current sound. But as soon as you turn on the video, you see them all wearing Christmas sweaters (with testicles), opening “presents” from the year 2020, showing fires and riots and viruses. And the lyrics bring it home. 

We have many anthems in this world. National anthems, Rock anthems, Generational anthems. We ought to have an anthem for the shitshow of the last eighteen months.

If anyone has reason to take special umbrage with the previous year, it’s Little Big. And me, because it took me a whole extra year to find them. 

Suck my dick, 2020. 2020, suck my dick.

Eine Kleine Music Thoughts

· June 2, 2021 · Musings · , , , , · No Comments

I’ve had a few random music thoughts of late. None really deserving of a post in its own right. Maybe worth a tweet, but who wants to read tweets spread over multiple days with even less continuity than usual? So maybe I’ll just throw the whole damned hodgepodge into a post.

To wit:

Neil Diamond. 

Did you know Neil Diamond is fun to listen to? I seemed to have forgotten.

I rarely seek him out. I never wake up in a Neil Diamond kinda mood. If I’m asking Alexa, my robot overlord, to shuffle songs by a certain artist, it ain’t gonna be the Diam-ster. 

Does he go by the Diam-ster? He totally should. I’m trademarking that bad boy right now. Neil, have your lawyers call my lawyers. Not that I have lawyers. Maybe that’s why I don’t understand how trademarks work.

The reason I don’t go out of my way to hear me some Neil is because his songs are mostly similar to each other. If you’ve heard one, you’ve sated that Diamond Itch (ooh, Trademark!). As I’ve mentioned before, my family loves Billy Joel Radio. With Billy Joel, you’ve got song variety and some great stories about what’s going on, both lyrically and musically, like why he decided to change into a C-minor for the second verse of that one song. There’s a reason Billy Joel Radio comes back every year. 

By comparison, Neil Diamond Radio lasted a few weeks once and never came back. Because every Neil Diamond song is September Morn, give or take five percent, eternally toeing that same line between soulful ballad and Album-Oriented Rock. Or maybe it’s Adult-Oriented Rock? I can’t tell the difference, but if you wanna sound like a snooty 1970s-era music aficionado, say AOR. It’s the musical equivalent of “I was using it as an adverb,” a rejoinder to which nobody can quibble.

Whereas Billy Joel introduces his songs with stories about threesomes with Christie Brinkley and Elle MacPherson, Neil Diamond’s stories tend more toward, “Well, it was a September morning so I decided to write a song called ‘September Morn.’ It’s in the key of… the same key as all my other songs. Same five notes, too.”

But dammit if I can stop myself from singing along.

The other day, I read a reference to Cracklin’ Rosie, and the song got stuck in my head. Seriously, if you could read that last sentence without singing “Get on board” in your head, then you’re stronger than I. It’s an impossibility. To be fair, I’m not pulling an Eric Cartman needing to sing the rest of the song, but I must finish the lyric. One doesn’t “Cracklin’ Rosie” without a “Get on board.”

Speaking of Eric Cartman, it’s hard to not sing along with Eric Carmen’s All by Myself, too. Can’t believe South Park didn’t go with that option instead of Come Sail Away. Too obvious? Probably a good thing I don’t write for South Park.

Shortly after the Cracklin’ Rosie (get on board) incident, I asked Alexa to play some Neil Diamond, then proceeded to belt out every song she played. 

I read recently that Paul Simon would not be remembered as much as Bob Dylan. My first thought was, “Well, duh, stupid clickbait.” I doubt Paul Simon would place himself in Bob Dylan’s category. Simon is, first and foremost, an entertainer, while Dylan is an icon, bigger than himself. But on the flip side, people don’t still whine to Paul Simon that he switched from acoustic to electric fifty years ago. And Bob Dylan never had Chevy Chase in any of his videos.

Neil Diamond is in the Paul Simon category. Not definitive of a genre, not an icon of a generation. Not music I’ll go out of my way to to. But if it’s on, I’m singing along and you better not touch that dial.

Air Supply. 

Most of what I wrote about Neil Diamond goes double for Air Supply. The only thing rarer than me seeking them out is me NOT singing along at the top of my goddamn lungs. And woe to whoever is within the same zip code.

I’ve seen Air Supply in concert three or four times and, let me tell you, they rock. It’s not a a word one normally associates with their sappy love songs, but if you listen in the background of their songs, there’s some solid guitar riffs. In concert, they bring those forward and emphasize the first word in power ballad.

And unlike some of the older acts I’ve seen (cough, cough, Eric Clapton, cough, cough), they still seem to enjoy touring. Even if they have to amend that lyric from Making Love Out of Nothing at All to “And I can make all the [state fairs] rock!”

Unlike Neil Diamond, I’m not surprised at my closet appreciation for Air Supply. When they come on the radio, I’m like, “Heck yeah, Air Supply!” instead of, “Oh hey, Neil Diamond?” Part of that dichotomy stems from the necessity to stand by your fandom. One doesn’t run into too many people arguing that Neil Diamond isn’t a legitimate musician. But say you’re an Air Supply fan and you’re encountering some raised eyebrows. Don’t let them cow you!

Ironically, I encounter Air Supply songs more often than Neil Diamond songs. Perhaps it’s my choice of radio station. While I’m only likely to encounter the latter if I tune in for the seventh-inning stretch of a Red Sox game, the former get heavy rotation on the SiriusXM Yacht Rock station.

I’ve blogged before about the amorphous blob that the “Yacht Rock” moniker is growing into. It’s supposed to reflect a certain carefree attitude, foolish pursuits of whimsical love, and perhaps a wee bit of drinking oneself into oblivion. Michael McDonald croons, “I keep forgetting we’re not in love anymore,” while the lead singer of the Doobie Brothers opines, “What a fool believes he sees, the wise man has the power to reason away.” Not sure who that guy is. Turns out his name is Michael McDonald. Wonder if they’re related.

Another big time Yacht Rocker is Kenny Loggins of This Is It and Danny’s Song fame, not to be confused with the King of the 1980s soundtracks, confusingly named Kenny Loggins. No way those two cats are the same. 

Or Kenny Rodgers, who was also known for both soft rock ballads and soundtracks, but definitely isn’t Yacht Rock. Unless you look at Lady a certain way. Islands in the Stream, too, which sounds sacrilegious because how can Dolly Parton be Yacht Rock until you realize that Barbara fucking Streisand gets the nod for her duet with Andy Gibb.

If the first rule of Fight Club is “never talk about Fight Club,” then the first rule of Yacht Rock is “is it Yacht Rock?”

And Air Supply isn’t Yacht Rock. Let me get that out of the way up front. They are straight-up, unabashed love songs. There is virtually no planet on which they should be considered otherwise.

Unless that planet is SiriusXM’s Yacht Rock station, cause let me tell you, they play Air Supply all the fucking time. 

Every single time, I say, “This isn’t Yacht Rock.” Then I sing along at the top of my lungs like it’s September Morn.

Yacht Rock Radio has quite a bit of this “Yacht Rock adjacent” music. What started as a distinct style and theme has morphed into “any soft rock from the late 1970s and early 1980s.” Or, in the case of Loggins and Messina, as early as 1971.

As with the Yacht Rock cover band I watched, at least when they’re playing non-Yacht Rock, they do a good job of playing stuff that anyone who tuned in for Yacht Rock won’t mind hearing. Like Al Stewart’s Year of the Cat. Seriously, what the fuck is that song? It’s like a genre unto itself. But it’s kinda fun to listen to. Quirky.

So keep playing Air Supply, SiriusXM. I’ll judge you, but then I’ll be anxiously listening for the next one.

WKRP in Cincinnati. 

While I’m on the topic of Yacht Rock, here’s another song that gets heavy rotation on the SiriusXM station.

It feels weird that a TV theme song gets the Yacht Rock designation, but if any one deserves it, this one might be it.

I take that back. Believe It or Not, the theme song from “The Greatest American Hero” is yachtier, but unfortunately the powers that be refuse to admit that. I’ve never once heard it on the rotation and, in case it isn’t obvious by now, I’ve got a lot of “Time Spent Listening.” What’s even more annoying is that one of their bumpers references it. The smooth, deep-voiced guy makes some asinine comment, says “Believe it or not,” and they cue up the refrain from a song they don’t fucking play on the station! What the hell? 

But if they’re not playing the quintessential Yacht Rock TV Theme, they’ve got a decent second-place replacement. 

Here’s the weird thing about WKRP in Cincinnati. Were you aware there’s more than one verse?

It’s not uncommon for some TV Themes to have extended cuts that become hits on their own. In the 1990s, the theme songs from both “Friends” and “Party of Five” made their way up various charts. Those songs, however, didn’t really make reference to the show, so it makes sense that I’ll Be There For You and Closer to Free might have extra verses. The verse that played during the opening credits sounded like a verse, or perhaps a chorus, not a song in its entirety. Similar things could be said about 1980s stalwarts like the aforementioned Believe It or Not, as well as Thank You for Being a Friend from that show about the four Miami sexpot lesbians. If the theme song started, “Whoa, those golden girls with their silver curls and their golden showers,” I wouldn’t expect to hear it on 80s on 8.

WKRP in Cincinnati, on the other hand, fits more in line with the 1970s trends of catering a theme song to the specific story of the TV Show. Nobody was running out to buy Brady Bunch or Love Boat on 45. The refrain “I’m on WKRP in Cincinnati” isn’t quite so ubiquitous as “Thank you for being a friend.” But props to the guy who was tasked with writing a TV theme song for not letting it stop there. He let the Yacht Rock flow and wrote a second damn verse.

The thing that sticks out when I hear the song is neither its relative yachtiness nor its success at incorporating the letters WKRP into a rhyming scheme. It’s the fact that the best line, a slice of lyrical that ties together the whole song, DOESN’T appear in the first verse, and therefore, on the very opening credits that necessitated the song in the first place.

From the “public” verse (“Baby, if you’ve ever wondered…”), you probably know that the song is a letter to a former love by someone settling down from a transient lifestyle. Somehow he decided a podunk radio station in southern Ohio was a good place to plant roots. Clearly he didn’t know that terrestrial radio was in its waning days of independence where wacky DJs like Dr. Johnny Fever could get away with shenanigans before going on to substitute teach a class of nerds.

The second verse continues in the same vein. “Heading up that highway, leaving you behind, hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Broke my heart in two, but Baby, pay no mind…” Thne comes the beautiful coda: “The price of finding me was losing you.”

Damn dude. Doesn’t really fit with a turkey drop, but hauntingly profound, nonetheless. 

Maybe don’t bury that on the B Side of all B Sides?

Barry Manilow and Phil Collins.

I didn’t start out this post intending to bring these two in, but in so many ways, they mirror my earlier topics.

Barry Manilow? Like Air Supply, ya gotta be unabashed in your appreciation. As with those two Aussies who seem to be singing their love toward each other, Barry’s lyrics are mushy as shit. Hence many a fan closeting their appreciation.

But musically, he’s solid. Predictable, but solid. It didn’t get called a “Barry Manilow key change” for nothing. The chord-progression equivalent of Spinal Tap’s “going to 11.” 

One cannot merely hum along with Barry. One must belt!

On a desert island with a gun to my head? I’d probably take Barry over Air Supply, based solely on the breadth of his catalog. Air Supply’s got, like, ten songs that I know all the words to. With Manilow, it’s closer to thirty. And Air Supply ain’t got nothin’ on par with Copacabana.

Which brings us full circle back to Phil Collins. I’ve got four of his albums, six if you count Genesis. Using the same metric, I’ve seen him twice or three times in concert. There’ve been a few times I’ve heard an unknown song and said, “That’s Phil Collins on drums,” and each time I was proven correct. Like Neil Diamond, you simply cannot argue with the quality of his work. Whether it’s his haunting early stuff from “Face Value,” the happy-go-lucky mid-eighties hits from “No Jacket Required,” or his supercilious wagging-of-finger songs from “But Seriously,” he’s consistently solid.

But like Neil Diamond, it’s easy to forget. His holier-than-thou attitude might be what sours me toward him. He kinds seems like a jerk. A tool. Both of them do. I feel like if SiriusXM tried a Phil Collins radio, his song introductions would be along the line of, “I wrote this song because I’m a good musician. I don’t care if you like it or not.”

But then there’s his remake of You Can’t Hurry Love. 

And what about those duets? Philip Bailey is usually painted as the talented one in Easy Lover, but if it was only Philip Bailey, it wouldn’t have been a hit. And don’t let amateurs butchering it at karaoke sour you on Separate Lives. If Endless Love hasn’t been banned from karaoke bars, then the ballad from “White Nights” has to be allowed, as well. 

To be honest, Phil Collins is one of the few singers I can’t karaoke. He’s a skosh to high for me, but not high enough to falsetto or belt. It’s painful. Bon Jovi’s in the same range. Every single other singer I’ve karaoked to, I’ve completely nailed. You’ll just have to trust me on that.

The easiest guy to karaoke is Neil Diamond and his five-note range. 

But as different as they are at the karaoke bar, Neil and Phil are birds of a feather in terms of listenability. Rarely top of mind. If I want to listen to them, you’ll get an eyeroll and a begrudging “I guess.”

But if you turn one of their songs on, you better keep it there. Maybe even repeat it more than once. Because dammit if they’re not good. 

I just can’t seem to remember that.

Seriously, go listen to Sussudio. Just TRY turn it off mid-song. You can’t, can you?

If you can, you’re a monster! Leave your name and I’ll report you to the authorities.

Your penance will be Forever in Blue Jeans.

2020 Virtual Concert Review

· January 5, 2021 · Blog Entries, Musings · , , , , , , , , · One Comment

Last week I wrote about the two aborted concerts that I hoped to attend in 2020. One was from Billy Joel, a tried-and-true entertainer I saw once before when I was in college. The other was Vampire Weekend, a band I wasn’t even aware of a year ago. For obvious reasons, neither concert happened.

But 2020 wasn’t completely devoid of live music. As long as you were willing to watch it on a screen.

So although I didn’t see the two concerts I intended to see, I did manage to watch two concerts in their entirety. Again, one featured old performers that I’ve already been throwing money at for decades, while the other came from a newish band that I’ve always been curious about seeing live.

Preservation Hall. 

I couldn’t make it to New Orleans to watch Vampire Weekend, but at least I could watch a streamed version of a concert for the New Orleans Jazz Preservation Hall. Or maybe it was on PBS. I can’t remember.

Seeing as New Orleans is one of my favorite cities to visit, I’ve watched a few concerts at Preservation Hall. It’s fun to stop in on an afternoon jaunt down Bourbon Street to hear jazz combos similar to my high school jazz band That’s not knock. My high school jazz band was pretty kick-ass. I love me some saxophone, trumpet, and trombone combos. Play me a simplified arrangement of a Count Basie tune, and I’ll happily put off my next hand grenade for twenty minutes or so.

At least I thought it was Preservation Hall I’d frequented on those trips down Bourbon. But now that I looked it up on Google Maps, it might actually be Maison Bourbon, a half-block away from the actual Preservation Hall. Oops.

Regardless, I was happy when they had a benefit concert online, with some really big names. I’m talking Dave Matthews, Elvis Costello, Paul McCartney. Unfortunately, it was in typical telethon fashion, where they wasted twenty minutes in between each song with interviews and “call in now” and shit. At least I could pause and skip ahead, something my grandparents could’ve only dreamed of back in the Jerry Lewis Labor Day snoozefests. 

Those big-name benefit songs had a very, very pre-recorded feel to them. There were a few, like Dave Grohl and Nathaniel Rateliff, who seemed to take it more seriously, picking their jazzier numbers and talking about the importance of either live music or of preserving olde tyme music. Others seemed to send in whatever promo song they had recorded for charity write-offs. I was looking forward to Elvis Costello and was disappointed when he just played some “songs off his newest album,” aka the part of the concert containing the Great Restroom Exodus.

Everybody on the comment box was pining away for McCartney. Where’s Paul? When will Paul be here? Clearly they haven’t sat through proper telethons. It was obvious he was going to be last, and it was obvious to be as non-specifically for Preservation Hall as it gets. He might’ve done “Hey, Jude.” I don’t remember. And he might or might not have looked two decades younger. At least Elvis had the decency to half-ass a newer song so we knew it was recorded this decade. 

I ended up liking the actual jazz band, who played an occasional song in between the big acts, better than the names that brought me there in the first place. Even so, I didn’t donate. 

I’ll drop some money at Maison Bourbon next time I’m in NOLA and we’ll call it good.

Nathaniel Rateliff. 

Later in the pandemic, Red Rocks in Colorado did an online fundraising concert, as well. Again, a place I’ve been to and enjoyed. And a band I like, as well. Tune me in.

And this was legitimately live. They were literally playing on the stage in front of an empty Red Rocks Amphitheater. You could switch cameras to watch the rocks instead, something I found myself doing when I went there, too. Although I didn’t have to switch cams then, I only had to pivot my neck.

Nathaniel Rateliff has been on my short list for some time. He wasn’t some unknown to top ten skyrocket like those Vampire Weekend upstarts. 

Of course, my first introduction to him was “S.O.B.,” the best drinking song this side of “Tubthumping.” Although neither of those songs should be considered happy drinking song. Maybe thinking enough about booze to want to write a song about it predicates a certain bipolar dependency. But then just when you’re about to commiserate with the artist, right there on the precipice of singing the blues, they bang the door down with a grandiose “fuck it, let’s get blotto.”

With a first song like that, one could understand my hesitation against full-throated bandwagon-jumping. If your initial hit is reminiscent of “Tubthumping,” you’ve gotta worry about being the next Chumbawumba. And how many other Chumbawumba songs have you ever heard? Unfortunately, I’ve heard others, and they need a drink. Holy crap, that’s a bad album.

At least Rateliff seemed to have some musical talent going for him, which was always missing from even the acceptable Chumbawumba song. Something similar could be said about Fun., which you must properly pronounce as “Fun period,” another band with a song that, at first, sounds like a fun (period) song about hanging out with your friends at the bar, something I did the majority of my twenties (and thirties). But on closer listen, it’s closer to a creepy “Every Breath You Take,” with the dude hoping to swoop in on an ex (whom he beat) when she’s drunk at the end of the night. At least Fun. had some good musical talent, but it was all based on something approaching ten-part harmony. Rateliff gets there by himself. With apologies to the Night Sweats.

But still, if you take one look at him, you don’t think rockstar. Or at least not young, eager, carpe-diem rock star. In his first music video, he looked like someone who’s been touring for forty years. Tore up from the floor up. Rode hard and put away wet. Whatever phrase you wanna use, he was no Justin Timberlake.

So somewhat gimmicky song about drinking and looking like he might be dead by the end of the week. I spent most of the last decade on the fringes of fandom. Perhaps appreciation would be the best descriptor. I heard some of his other songs and they all showed promise. What I was waiting for was the staying power. It’s so much easier when the band already has four full albums before I discover them.

Similar to Vampire Weekend, Nathaniel Rateliff’s most recent album (actually his third album, not his second as I originally believed) came out shortly before the pandemic, so I was able to hear the songs as they received copious amounts of radio play. I enjoyed “Baby It’s Alright.” Very bluesy. A ballad. Some vibrato in the voice. Polar opposite of “SOB,” although not really, because you’ve still got the mournful voice, the hurt. There’s a lot lying there underneath the surface. This was no Chumbawumba. This wasn’t even a repeat of Fun. (Am I supposed to put another period if Fun. is at the end of a sentence?).

The final hurdle I needed to pass (aside from buying his albums because that’s what YouTube is for) was to see him live. He definitely seemed to have the vibe of a good live act. I tend to like the acts whose songs are equal parts emotion and talent. Those tend to make the best shows as opposed to, say, a band that’s more concerned with choreography or pyrotechnics. In all honesty, I’m a little worried my current fascination with Vampire Weekend might wane after seeing them live. They seem a wee bit aloof, a sconce “we wrote good songs, so we don’t need to put any emphasis into it. Sing along if you must.”

So the last thing I needed to become a proper Nathaniel Rateliff fan, to finally determine if he’s talent or hack, was to see him live. And if I can see him for free, all the better. 

Oops, was I supposed to donate to Red Rocks while watching the free concert?

And yeah, the dude is solid. He feels every song. He emotes. And he’s no slouch on the guitar, either. I could see him being the kind of guy who would play for three or four hours if the crowd and venue allowed it. With “S.O.B.” it’s clear he’s got some inner demons. It feels like the stage is where he exorcizes them, and he’s all too aware of it.

One oddity was that he appeared to be playing through his entire new album, track by track. I tuned in late, so I don’t know if this was explained or if the first half of the concert was some old stuff. So he never played “S.O.B.”

I bet a lot of artists wish they could do that. After all, the new songs are the ones that mean the most to them. It’s our fault that they keep having to bust out “Freebird.” If we aren’t in the crowd then we can go fuck ourselves if we’re only tuning in for his one hit six years ago.

The weirdest part of the whole concert was that he DIDN’T come out for an encore. What the fuck? Were we not cheering loudly enough at our homes thousands of miles away? What do you want us to do? Pay to get you to…

Oh…

Oh, I think I get it now.

My bad.

2020 Aborted Concert Reviews

· December 29, 2020 · Blog Entries, Musings · , , , , , · One Comment

This is the time of year I usually review the concerts I attended over the past twelve months. I don’t see why this year should be any different.

Except for the fact that every concert on the face of the earth was canceled in 2020. Along with the movies and holidays and amusement parks. We literally had Disneyland booked for about five days after it shit down. You didn’t get that post, so I might as well tell you about a couple of great concerts that almost happened.

Billy Joel. This one wasn’t as imminent as Disneyland, but tickets were bought, timeshare was booked, and flights were very seriously vetted.

My daughter’s favorite musician is Billy Joel. Her favorite days of the year, in no particular order, are 1) her birthday, 2) Christmas, and 3) the day Billy Joel Radio returns to SiriusXM. It makes her so much fun to hang out with amongst all her other first-grade companions.

The temporary SiriusXM station was the first one we could play in the car to break the monotony of those Fisher Price CDs that formed the soundtrack to her third year on the planet. Which was far more exciting for Mom and Dad than it was for Daughter. Compared to “Wheels on the Bus” for the hundredth time, even “When in Rome” shines.

I don’t have anything against “When in Rome.” It’s Billy Joel who hates it. He claims he throws a couple shitty songs on each album because he’s tapped out after ten or eleven new songs, but the record labels require thirteen. If you wanna have a hit, you gotta make it fit.

Then again, Billy Joel also thinks “Piano Man” is just a silly limerick, so what does he know? (Even if he’s right)

Daughter’s favorite song is “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song),” but not for any nascent desire to warp forward twelve years so she can leave her own Mama Leoni peace-out note for her parents. Nope, she likes the motorcycle sound in the final chorus. Right after one of the final “I’m movin’ outs,” there’s a few revs and then a squeal for emphasis. So maybe she hasn’t made it far from “Wheels on the Bus,” after all.

I think it was the variety that her young ears and mind enjoyed the most. Billy Joel’s got a great catalog if you aren’t in the mood to listen to one style. If we tell Alexa to play Mumford and Sons or Jimmy Buffett or even the Beatles, artists she knows plenty of songs from, it starts to get redundant a lot sooner than if we tell her to play some Billy. 

Yes, she knows a few modern songs, too, but with no school this year, she’s still stuck in 2019. Aren’t we all? Still, the songs that really get the “Ooo, I know this one” going are “Piano Man” and “You May Be Right” and “Only the Good Die Young.” Good thing I’m not raising her Catholic.

So we figured what better first concert for her than Billy Joel? If we wait too long, we might be waiting too long, if you know what I mean. The same could be said for Jimmy Buffett, but a) it doesn’t look like Jimmy Buffett’s going to stop touring anytime soon, and b) we might get arrested when half of her blood is second-hand ganja. Maybe when she’s a teenager I’ll make her my designated driver to a Mumford concert. Is sixteen too young to have the super important “British and Aussies don’t consider cunt offensive” talk? Because last time I saw Mumford, that word came out a lot. So it’s either when she listens to Mumford or watches “The Boys.”

The added benefit of taking her to see Billy Joel was the locale. He doesn’t really tour anymore, maxing out at one big stadiums every month or so. This year, the plan was Notre Dame, Detroit, and Fenway Park, none of which are within a couple time zones of us West Coasters. I know he had a really lousy experience when he lived in LA, but c’mon Billy, that was fifty years ago.

Other than that, he has a “residency” at Madison Square Gardens. I put that word in quotes because most of the residencies I know of are in Vegas, where you play every fucking night and twice on Saturday. His residency at MSG is one show a month. Sounds more like a “recurring guest star” than anything involving the word “reside.”

When we came back from New York a couple years ago, Daughter was enamored with New York, commenting every time it popped up on anything. That’s waned a bit, but she’s still fascinated by the Statue of Liberty, something we intentionally avoided when it was just the two of us. We opted for the 9/11 museum instead, since I wouldn’t call it the most kid friendly spot in New York. 

So let’s see, daughter’s “favorite” musician (one I haven’t seen live since 1993, and who Wife has never seen) playing in New York. Add in some timeshare points that were going to expire and our Summer Vacation was set. We had tickets right behind the stage which, if nothing’s changed since 1993, is a great place to see Billy Joel, as he puts synthesizers on the back and plays a few songs to the nosebleeds.

Of course, assuming everything works the same as it did in 1993 isn’t always a sure bet. Just ask my back.

I still don’t know what’s happening with those expiring timeshare points. Back in April or May, they sent us a notice about extending all deadlines by three months to account for that “short” shutdown. Haven’t heard anything since said shutdown is at LEAST into “medium” length, right? 

So yeah, in some alternate universe, that July 25 concert was great! Daughter loved “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Theme)” and sang along heartily to “Piano Man” when he magically returned to the stage AFTER the concert was over ONLY because our raucous applause convinced his stone-cold, New York heart that he just couldn’t finish yet.

When she’s a teenager, I’ll explain the whole pre-planned encore thing. 

Vampire Weekend. 

Earlier this year I made a list of my ten definitive albums. Not necessarily the best albums, not the dreaded desert island discs, but the albums that best defined my musical development. In the “also deserving recognition” addendum, I mentioned my newest find, Vampire Weekend. They were kinda disqualified from the album list based on the fact that I didn’t actually own any of their albums. Hard to call it one of my definitive records, or even one of my favorite bands, if I’ve never given them a penny of my money. Unless they get ad money from YouTube.

Note: Wife bought me some of their CDs for Christmas, so I suppose I can call myself a fan now. 

Regardless, bands don’t make shit off of albums anymore, which makes 2020 a particularly brutal year for recording artists. The father of my daughter’s best friend is in a band and they are reeling this year. Their European tour was canceled. He went to Nashville for two months where the band could quarantine and record a new album. I commented that at least they would have some income. He only laughed, and it wasn’t a funny kind of laugh.

What did elicit a funny laugh, at least from me, was when Daughter was on Zoom with her bestie. They play Roblox and Animal Crossing and other various games while talking on a computer screen to each other. It’s the 2020 equivalent of that quaint, outdated “going over to a friend’s house.” During one of their conversations, Daughter referenced holding a guitar, then said, in that six-year-old way, “You might not know how to hold a guitar, but my Daddy has one.” 

That’s right. Explaining to the daughter of the bass player in a band with multiple top-20 hits and a Grammy that HER Daddy owns an acoustic guitar he hasn’t played regularly since college. Maybe I can talk to her daddy about the complexities of the A-chord.

Anyway, Vampire Weekend is one of my new faves. It turns out they’ve been around for more than a decade, with four albums, but I’m in my mid-forties and can’t be bothered with this newfangled shit. Like Douglas Adams said about technology, any music that comes out after you’re thirty years old is devil-spawned racket that wouldn’t know  talent if it bit them in the ass. But when it’s a pandemic year and I can listen to music for the eight hours a day I’m usually in front of and amongst students, I might discover some music this side of the Foo Fighters.

I actually heard Vampire Weekend before everything shut down. After hearing “This Life” on the radio a few times, I had to track down who they were and the name of the song so I could play it for Wife. Better to frontload the spouse with the fact that the song currently stuck in my head has the refrain “You’ve been cheating on, cheating on me; I’ve been cheating on, cheating on you.” That’s not a phrase you want to absentmindedly be muttering to yourself without forewarning.

And of course, once I’ve played that song on YouTube, I get suggested toward their back catalog. Uplifting, catchy guitar riffs, bouncy tempo. Pretty sure I remember hearing some of those early songs a decade ago, most prominently “A-Punk,” but they didn’t distinguish themselves from a bevvy of bands like the Lumineers or Of Mice and Men.

Their lyrics are great, too. Intellectual, extended metaphors, not the normal rhyming riff-raff. One would thing I’d be predisposed to disapprove of them, starting off one of their hits with the line, “Who gives a fuck about the oxford comma?” How dare they! You know who gives a fuck about the oxford comma? Me! You know who else? Adolf Hitler, my grandfather and the man who invented internet pornography.

“This Life” wasn’t actually the first single off of their newest album. First came “Harmony Hall,” which, despite being released in 2019, contains quite possibly the definitive lyric for 2020 – “I don’t wanna live like this, but I don’t wanna die.” I hear ya, Ezra. 

So once I find a new band, and knowing that I gotta see them live to support them, I checked out their tour schedule. And what’s this? They’re going to be in one of my favorite cities, New Orleans? During my school district’s Fall Break? People with a fancy vocabulary like Vampire Weekend might call that serendipity. 

Doubt I would’ve taken Wife to this one, seeing as October is the start of her busy season at work and New Orleans isn’t as high on her list as it is on mine. Definitely not taking Daughter to NOLA until I’ve practiced that whole “cunt” speech more. In April, when we were told “three weeks to flatten the curve,” I broached the subject with a couple fellow teachers, since they’d also be off that week. Their responses ranged from “Who the fuck are Vampire Weekend?” to… “Who the fuck are Vampire Weekend?”

So I countered with hand grenades, the wondrous grain alcohol & melon concoction from the Tropical Isle on Bourbon Street. They grew intrigued. So maybe I would’ve had two people accompany me on the trip but still gone to the concert alone. 

The band canceled their May and June dates. Then July and August. I stopped checking. For all I know, Vampire Weekend ended up playing a wonderful show to a sold-out crowd, tens of thousands of fans crooning about oxford commas and cheating on, cheating on you.

Although Vampire Weekend are younger than me. Do kids still sing along at concerts? I’ve been told I can use my cellphone instead of a lighter on ballads these days. 

While I’m at it, can we do something about that 8:00 p.m. start time? That’s usually my bed time.

But it wasn’t all cancellations and catshit. I actually managed to see some concerts in 2020! If you can’t get both “live and in person,” you might as well settle for one. Again, one featured artists I saw when I was a much younger man, and another from a band I’m new to. Check out my virtual concert reviews.

My Top Ten Albums

· June 26, 2020 · Blog Entries, Musings · , , , , , , , · No Comments

I usually try to avoid whatever pointless social media challenge is trending. You know the ones. Post your favorite elbow pictures. Or random movie quotes. Or thirty days of humblebrags posed as “things I’m thankful for” but are really “reasons I think I’m better than you.”

You know those ones?

But Wife tagged me in one and it was about music, and y’know, it’s not like I have other things to occupy my time with here in the 2020 hellscape. So I guess I can cut and paste some album covers. 

If you’ve been of Facebook recently, you’ve probably seen the one I’m talking about. There are actually two of them, one about movies and one about albums. But I’m not big on movies, so I decided to only play the album one.

You’re supposed to pick ten albums that, I don’t know, are good? That define you? That were important? That you got laid to? Maybe that’s another reason to not do the movie thing. Nobody wants to know which scene we got our freak on to in Jurassic Park. 

(Nature finds a way…)

But here’s the kicker. You’re not allowed to say jack shit about the album itself or why you chose it. What the fuck? That’s like having a therapist say, “So your father abandoned you? Don’t tell me any more. That’s plenty.”

It’s the teenage girl or the male pick-up asshat version. Stay mysterious. Don’t let them see the real you. Just put some albums out there that you think there will be consensus on. Don’t tell anybody what makes you click, just do it for the likes. But if my favorite album is the audiobook of “Mein Kampf,” read by the author, shouldn’t that come with a little explanation?

So whatever, I played their stupid game. And now I’m here to expand upon it. 

A couple of explanations. First, you can call me grandpa, but to me an album is an entity created by the artist and should be listened to in order. One song leads into the next. So unlike virtually all of my friends, even my wife who challenged me to do this, I refused to put any greatest hits compilations on my list. Those are horseshit, and are only used as a cop-out way of saying “I like this artist.” Don’t fall for it! If you really liked that artist, you’d try to appreciate why they made a certain album the way I did. eg Let it Be was created by non-musician Phil Spector, and should not be confused with a Beatles album, even if it’s got some of the greatest Beatles songs.

I did almost put a live album on my list, but Wife said live albums are effectively greatest hits albums. I disagree because, again, the artist is making choices over what order the songs go during a concert. For instance, Paul McCartney sings “Jet” second in both Wings Over America and, fifteen years later, Tripping the Live Fantastic.  And I think he did it one other time. He REALLY likes that as a “sit the fuck back down” song. However, the live album I was going to use was 24 Nights, which was recorded over, you guessed it, 24 nights. So fine, if it’s not the actual lineup from the actual concert, then maybe I shouldn’t use it.

Secondly, these aren’t supposed to be the greatest albums of all time. Nor are these the dreaded “Desert Island Discs,” meaning the ten I would want if stranded somewhere. Let’s be honest, Desert Island Discs SHOULD be greatest hits. More bang for the buck. This list isn’t even my ten favorite albums, because then I’d probably just throw in four Beatles, three Mumford & Sons, and “24 Nights” and be done with it. It’s supposed to be the formative albums of your life, whatever the hell that means. I was using it, as with my weenie friends who used greatest hits albums, as representative albums of various genres and artists. 1. Abbey Road. The ultimate no-brainer that is anything but a no-brainer. If an album is an intentional conglomeration of songs in a specific order, then there is no better barometer of this than an album whose entire second side is one long medley of songs that flow together. Although the same could be said for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Blub Band and maybe even Magical Mystery Tour. Hell, Revolver is a damned fine album, too. In fact, I’ve probably listened to Revolver more often than Abbey Road. Pretty much any list of definitive albums, either in my life or in the world, should have a steady stream of Beatles. Hell, even their earlier shit was pretty avant garde for the time. But yeah, as far as albums go, ya gotta pick Abbey Road. Have I mentioned we named my daughter Abby Rose?

2. Travelers & Thieves. From one of the most well-known albums of all-time to one you’ve probably gotta google. I’ll save you the effort – Travelers & Thieves is Blues Traveler’s second studio album. And if you bought it back in the early 1990s, like I did, it came with an extra live disc, “On Tour Forever,” which only has four songs because Blues Traveler tend to play 20 minute long songs. I once went to a festival where they were playing with Allman Brothers and Phish. I don’t quite remember which of the three bands was playing when some hippie dude came up to me and said, “I hope these shrooms last as long as that last guitar solo,” but you get the point.

If you’re not a Blues Traveler fan, you haven’t heard any of the songs from Travelers & Thieves. Their two big hits, “But Anyway” and “”Run-Around,” come from their first and fourth albums respectively. Travelers & Thieves might not even be my favorite of theirs. Although, let’s be honest, second albums are often the best. If I were to rank the best Blues Traveler albums, I’d probably pick Bridge, their sixth album and the first one after their bassist died. While they aren’t as good of a band without Bobby Sheehan, a fact I’ve mentioned in one of my concert write-ups, there was something cathartic about that album.

But this list isn’t the best albums. This list is the albums that defined my music tastes. And when eighteen-year-old me heard the introductory track, a building crescendo reminiscent of “A Day in the Life,” delivering the listener into the driving bass line (we miss you, Bobby) of the first real song, I was hooked. I was running down to The Wherehouse to buy myself a copy of this godsend before I even made it to the first John Popper harmonica solo.

3. Babel. As with Travelers & Thieves, my first reaction when I heard Mumford & Sons was, “Holy shit! You can do that with music?” I suppose I had a similar reaction to Abbey Road, although I was probably too young to articulate it as such. 

Unlike Blues Traveler, I first heard Mumford on the radio. I don’t know how much “I Will Wait” appeared on my radar. I think I enjoyed it, but it didn’t do much to separate itself from a lot of the other songs coming out in that era. If you made me separate Mumford from, say, Of Monsters and Men or The Lumineers or Vampire Weekend in 2011, I don’t know if I could’ve done it. 

But the first time I heard “Little Lion Man,” the Lumineers had to step aside. It also helped to separate “I Will Wait” from the other songs of the previous few years. I did something crazy, something I hadn’t done in years. I went out and bought two albums. As in the physical CDs. Fortunately my car at the time still had a player.

And if you think about it, Babel is even more impressive than Travelers & Thieves because of my age when I encountered them. Eighteen-year-olds are supposed to find new bands, new genres of music. There’s a reason it’s called “College Music.” You’re not supposed to find new bands in your mid-thirties. You shouldn’t be wowed by what the kids are doing with their musical instruments these days. By God, if it didn’t exist when I was twenty, then it’s just noise. What? Bands have webpages now? Whatever happened to sending out a Christmas 45?

That’s it for the Big Three. I mentioned it on Facebook, and I’ll mention it here. Everything from here on is nitpicking and hair-splitting. Album number four might as well be album number fifteen. But the big three are on an island by themselves.

4. Pay Attention. I never really got into the brief ska phase in the 1990s, but Mighty Mighty Bosstones is good enough to be mainstream. I could also throw Reel Big Fish in to that regard. But I don’t see myself ever owning any Reel Big Fish beyond their greatest hits. Whereas I own three Bosstones albums.

Truthfully, it was kind of a toss-up between Let’s Face It and Pay Attention. The former has “The Impression That I Get” and “Rascal King” on it, which are their better-known singles. But I’ve listened to Pay Attention far more often. It’s got a greater variety of songs, many of which wouldn’t work as singles, but are as invigorating as hell. “High School Dance,” for instance, is written from a school shooter’s perspective, so maybe it hasn’t aged well. 

On one of those other Facebook games many a year ago, we had to write down ten bands and make people guess the one we HADN’T seen in concert. Nobody guessed mine. Everyone guessed Sarah McLachlan. Nope, seen her three times. Even my wife responded with, “You haven’t seen Mighty Mighty Bosstones? You listen to them all the time.” I should probably get on that if concerts ever come back.

5. Altered Beast. Matthew Sweet had three solid albums in a row and then a whole lotta nothing. Or maybe I just graduated from college so I can’t “get” his later music. Anyway, solid album. It also is distinct in that the album came out in four different colors. Same cover, just different colors. I had purple, in case you’re wondering.

I’ve also discovered that creating a Matthew Sweet channel on Pandora is the best way to drill down into the music I listened to in college. I can’t think of any other band or musician that isolates a certain sound and a certain time period. It’ll give you some Lemonheads, some Gin Blossoms, Dinosaur Jr. If you ever watched “Alternative Nation” with Kennedy on MTV, trust me on this one. Pandora’ll play shit you haven’t thought about in twenty-five years.

6. An Innocent Man. This is the first one I posted that received arguments back. And then, I don’t know, am I supposed to engage in said argument or does the “without comment” instruction extend beyond the initial posting of picture? Anyway, many of my friends were incensed at this particular iteration of Billy Joel. What about The Stranger? To say nothing of Glass Houses. Or Storm Front… Or… Or…

Says a shit-ton about Billy Joel, huh? The album with “Tell Her About It,” “Uptown Girl,” and “Keeping the Faith” gets poo-pooed as hardly deserving to be in his top five. 

Sure, I could’ve picked any of those others, but An Innocent Man was the first CD I ever bought, not to be confused with Hall & Oates’ Private Eyes, which was the first album I ever saved up my allowance to “buy.” I bought An Innocent Man with my own money, almost as an afterthought. My sister’s friend needed bail money, so he sold me a used (or maybe stolen) CD player for $80, which was a hell of a deal in 1989. Then I realized I had no CDs, without which said CD Player wasn’t so great of a deal. So I went to the Wherehouse after school to pick one out. I wanted one with a lot of songs I like. Couldn’t have a repeat of that mistake I made when I was eight years old and only liked one other song on Private Eyes. What a waste of weeks of allowance!

So yeah, I stand by An Innocent Man as my Billy Joel album of choice. Besides, The Stranger and Glass Houses don’t have any songs co-written by Beethoven, do they?

7. Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. I needed a Clapton representation, but it’s tough to pick one. The problem with Clapton is most of his iconic songs are on different albums. If you want, say, “Tears in Heaven,” it’s a throw-in at the end of a movie soundtrack. Although that movie soundtrack, all by Clapton, is one of the greatest acoustic guitar albums of all time, even if it was hard as hell to find. I can’t tell you how many times the local CD bar thought I was asking for the new Rush album, not the soundtrack for the movie “Rush.”

So let’s see. Timepieces is way too early in his career to be a proper greatest hits. 24 Nights (see above) works better. Journeyman (see below) is probably the one I’ve listened to the most. 

This Derek and the Dominoes album, then, is about as solid, front to back, as it gets. When I first bought it, it was only for the title track, a la Hall & Oates. I actually thought the rest of the album was a little boring. A little slow. I was expecting rock and I got blues. How does the greatest song in rock history find itself as the thirteenth track of a blues album? But I’m not fifteen anymore. I now appreciate music that isn’t balls-to-the-wall. Having two of the greatest guitarists of all time (and those other three band members weren’t slouches either) find their inner Duke and Satchmo is pretty fucking awesome. 

Some of the songs grew on me after hearing other versions. “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” was released as a single from his Unplugged album and “Bell Bottom Blues” came from 24 Nights. I don’t know that he’s ever re-released “I Looked Away” or “Key to the Highway,” but he ought to.

But seriously, go listen to Clapton bend the string on that “Bad Love” solo on 24 Nights.  Possibly the greatest single guitar note of all time.

8. But Seriously. Hey, great segue. This album is a bit of an anomaly on my list. I can’t 100% be sure this is my favorite Phil Collins album. No Jacket Required has “Sussudio” AND “Don’t Lose My Number.” And somehow Phil Collins clearly had a time machine when he wrote that album. How else do you explain the following lyric: “I’ve been sitting here so long, wasting time, just staring at the phone.”

Nor would I say But Seriously is the best album of the year it came out. Which leads me to my conundrum. 1989 was, in my opinion, one of the best musical years ever. I know everyone thinks the year they turned fifteen was the greatest musical year ever. But hear me out. 1989 represented the last gasp of many of the classic rockers. They were all moving into their late-forties and started to write about hardening arteries and such. In 1989, they could still have a little bit of drive. 

Oh, and I turned fifteen in 1989.

Here’s only a partial list of albums that came out in 1989. I’ve tried to cover each of them in other spots on this list. 

–Full Moon Fever: Probably, objectively, the best album of the year. See below. 

–Journeyman: if I didn’t have Clapton on this list already, this would’ve been my 1989 pick. This was his last rock album. 

–Flowers in the Dirt: Maybe not one of Paul McCartney’s best, but it was on continuous loop on my CD changer.

–Spike: Great collaboration between Elvis (the musically talented Elvis, that is) and Paul on this and “Flowers.” 

–Storm Front: See Above.

–Oranges & Lemons: XTC listened to Sgt. Pepper nonstop when they recorded this album, and it shows.

–Best Shots: I know I said no greatest hits, but as greatest hits go, Pat Benatar is a pretty solid entry. And a great title, considering her most well known song.

9. Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 1. This was a weird one. It took me a while to think of it, but as soon as I did, it was like, “Holy crap, that has to be in there.” If Derek and the Dominoes is great because it has two of the best, how about a group with five? This album is so good, and it gave me cover to avoid tabbing Full Moon Fever as my Albome de 1989. Because Full Moon Fever, while technically a Tom Petty solo project, had a number of the Wilburys playing on it. It is, effectively, Volume 2, which helps answer the question of why they skipped from Volume 1 to Volume 3. Also because they were having fun. They picked different pseudonyms and everything on Volume 3.

Volume 3’s a solid effort, but it’s just not the same without Roy Orbison. His voice added a magic that, say, Bob Dylan’s voice doesn’t. And hey, who would’ve guessed that we’re one Jeff Lynne mishap from Dylan being the last surviving member of the Traveling Wilburys? Good thing I didn’t make that bet back in 1988.

10. Armed Forces. This was a last minute addition. Similar to Traveling Wilburys, when I was listing the albums in the running for 1989, I realized that Elvis Costello was completely missing from my list. And really, I could probably pick up to five of his albums that deserve mention. If the all acoustic “Rush” soundtrack sounds up your alley, try Elvis Costello singing in front of a string quartet in The Juliet Letters. Of course, I’m partial to his back-to-back collaboration-with-McCartney albums, Spike and Mighty Like a Rose, because they both came out when I was in high school. 

But I admit that true Elvis Costello should be earlier in his career, when he was in full “& the Attractions” mode. Blood and Chocolate might be one of the coolest-named albums of all time, and it’s solid, to boot. King of America is a good entry, as well. But in the end, an album that starts with the lyric, “Oh, I just don’t know where to begin” sums up what an album is supposed to be as wonderfully as the Abbey Road medley.

Honorable Mentions:

–Americana Deluxe. If I wanted to go with the late-1990s swing blip instead of the late-1990s ska blip, in lieu of Bosstones, I could’ve gone with this Big Bad Voodoo Daddy album, which I always assumed was named “Big Bad Voodoo Daddy” until I just googled it. Maybe that’s a good reason to not include in my list. Plus, while Voodoo Daddy burned brighter, but the Bosstones stuck around for longer.

–Tower of Power. This was album number ten until the Case of the Missing Elvis began to haunt my dreams. And yeah, I just checked that the album has the same name as the band. Now I’m gun shy. 

–Father of the Bride. This Vampire Weekend album came out in 2019. It’s a strong late entry. Except I don’t own the album. I only listen to it on YouTube or else I tell Alexa to play Vampire Weekend and I get a smattering of all four of their albums. That’s what music is in the twenty-first century. Everything’s a greatest hit album.

–Black Parade. Ditto this My Chemical Romance album. It’s great. Title track might be one of the best songs ever written. But I’ve only listened to it on YouTube. If I don’t own an album, can it be one of my definitive albums?

–Sinatra Reprise: The Very Good Years. No greatest hits, but if I were allow myself a greatest hits, there isn’t a better one than Frank Sinatra. And really, I think Sinatra pre-dates albums, so it could be fair game. This album isn’t really a greatest hits, it’s just a sampling of a few years he was at Reprise Records instead of Capitol. What’s the difference between a Sinatra album and a greatest hits, anyway?

So there you have it. Maybe I’ll return next week with my favorite uses of mayonnaise. Not counting that one scene in Jurassic Park.

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