Your friends are waiting for you at the bar.

Its Friday and the end of the first quarter. My most hated time of the year is officially over. And baseball season truly starts in a week. We made it! Now, get yourself a cold one, howl at the moon and tell Old Man Winter where he can put his crappy weather.

Upcoming Boston p-rock movie

Halen, dude!

Enough with your winter weather and affected alterna rock. Summer is around the corner, I've got a fantasy baseball draft to prepare for and Van Halen is coming to your town. I can't wait to see 50 yo women take their tops off while David Lee Roth hobbles around the stage. This is going to RAWK, brother, RAWK! Oh, and for the love of Eddie Van Halen, will somebody write a freakin record review?

Anyone out there?

Another Reason Hip Hop Sucks

http://youtu.be/0qT4zTv_vVY

Cloud Nothings

If two things have come to represent the death of rock to the grizzled punker, they are the sweater and the horned rim glasses of modern pop stars. Stars? Well, if mumbling insecurities and casting eyes downward while avoiding all emotional contact with one's audience can describe a star, perhaps we need a new metaphor. I don't understand new alterna-indie music. I kept hearing about Sleigh Bells and so I downloaded some of their music and I sat before the computer, back aching, stupified, wondering how I had become that guy, the one who wonders sincerely where it all went wrong with western civilization. That Sleigh Bells shit? That is some terrible fucking music. I don't care how hot the singer is.

So let me recommend a new band with a young singer who wears sweaters and horned rimmed glasses and has even grown a scruffy beard and let's all take a breath and remember that melody, at the end of the day, is king. Cloud Nothings is essentially some 19-year old kid named Dylan whom you really shouldn't look up on youtube. Just listen to the tunes, and you'll have a better chance of enjoying something from that generation that gets harder to understand. The first record proper, the self-titled one, sounds like a Lemonheads greatest hits record if they had more complex songwriting angles and didn't withdraw into punk cliches. He even sounds like that other Lemonhead singer from the early days not named Evan. I'm telling you man- this kid finds melodies around every turn, and some of them are surprising. So what's the rub? The kid, young as he is, clearly hadn't decided who he wanted to sound like, and some of the voices sound like seven shades of indie fey, while others get closer to that L-head dude. Your chances of enjoying the record depend in part on your ability to get past some of his more grating voices, and that ain't easy. I keep listening to the thing and the vocals grate less, but I can't say you won't hear it, cringe, and curse my name.

What's more interesting is that the sophomore effort sounds little like the first one. This guy could have taken his time and crafted twelve more love letters to the harmony gods, but he gets a touch aggro in spots and spreads himself out in space, jamming out the repetition in one tune to over eight minutes of what may or may not be ironically named "Wasted Days." And heresy alert: it sounds like a cleaned up Wipers in spots, even if the voice doesn't. This kid nails some pop songs along the way, as just eight tunes arrive, but the risk-taking counts, and this is one kid to pay attention to, especially if he gets contacts, buys a leather jacket and shaves. That was a joke, asshole.

Michael Hurley and the Meaning of Life

Michael Hurley records sound like a porch hootenany, except everyone knows how to play and no one takes himself seriously. Remember when your stoner friends used to tinkle around with the guitar while you were trying to watch the game? Michael Hurley is the opposite of those guys. I first got excited by Mr. Hurley when I stumbled upon his record with ex-Holy Modal Rounders weirdo Peter Stampfel, Have Moicy, and it remains my favorite listen. These be goofy melodies inescapable, and they will have their way with your memory.  Remember that mildly pleasant three-date affair you had with that girl your friend introduced you to? Side 1 Track 3 will replace that chick, pronto.  Mississippi Records in their continued foresight and relentless generosity has seen fit to reissue a number of Hurley records, and don't come barking up my tree to differentiate between them. Do what I did, sucker- buy them all, and then play them consecutively each and every Sunday morning. Have your significant other make strong coffee and reciprocate by allowing her to listen to these tunes. You'll relax together on the couch and all plans will melt like your earlier ambitions to be someone and soon you'll recognize the meaning of life is lying on the couch with your honey and listening to Michael Hurley records. You went to Tony Robbins and paid the big bucks, and now I'm giving you the real shit for free.   Sure, you could strive for fame and fortune and self-actualization, or you could lie on the sofa and listen to quality porch music.  Wisdom comes in choosing.

Valentine Soul

On The Town from thetuna on 8tracks.

You Demanded It- Hear It Is

The Oblivians are making a new record for In the Red- it's 1996 all over again. If their live performance at Budget Rock is any indication of how much they've singularly and collectively got in the tank, there's room for hope.  One of my favorite bands of this very long life is going to crank it up one more time. I think I'll pour one. I suggest you do the same.

John Baldry- It Ain't Easy

Let's see- a 6 foot 7 long blond-haired gay man delivers a mostly blues-based cover album with Rod Stewart producing side 1 and Elton John twiddling knobs on the flip. Sounds like a soundtrack for a Tiburon hoedown when all those fleshy fiftysomethings get out the Hawaiian shirts and the floppy hats and the bottles of expensive wine and have themselves a Saturday afternoon. Except it's not. It's actually pretty good, and even a recipe for certain disaster- a white man trying Willie Dixon's "I'm Ready"- is shockingly strong.  Remember that tune on Ziggy Stardust, "It Ain't Easy"? That was a cover by someone named Ron Davies (no relation) and I didn't know that either, and Baldry not only cops it for the album's title but delivers a better version than Bowie's.  Not everything works- his shot at The Faces' "Flying" stinks, but it's the last song of the album so you can lift the needle without fumbling to find the next groove. It's a buck- why wouldn't you want to own a record by a man named Long John Baldry with photos of a pensive Stewart with headphones staring wistfully into the distance and a cowboy-hatted Reginald Dwight looking yearningly toward what one can only assume is a, well, I'm not going to make that joke.

Zabriskie Point- Sail On, Hippie Lovers

Just look at that picture for a minute. Maybe it's a Rorshach test, but what I once saw as silly and dangerous stupidity being celebrated as social revolution I now see as something more murky. It's easy to forget the drug experimentation and feelings of godliness said trips brought on and poo poo them all as moments of passing youthful chemical fancy. These days, I'm not so sure.  Leave politics out of it, and the search for personal illumination via chemical transformation remains a viable alternative to church.  I've never felt a sense of the divine in a pew, but I was overwhelmed by a sense of oneness with all things living while frying on a jetty in Newport.  Are these just ephemeral illusory states delivered by Hoffman that connects and then opens neural pathways one can't access when the 12 hours are up?  I've never met a single acid devotee who buys that line, and I don't buy it either. The memories and, more importantly, the feelings, linger. Why is the acid head's pure belief in the divine while frying less legitimate than the knee-bending wafer receiver at Sunday mass?   Most acid music meanders into places that send you reaching for the remote and all things secular, but this soundtrack of an unwatchable movie delivers mostly quiet, acoustic sounds that play gentle on morning ears.  I flip it back and forth and putter about my day.  John Fahey's "Dance of Death" is a particular standout, and even Pink Floyd surprises here, producing the backdrop for the bad side of that desert trip. Jerry Garcia's guitar sounds- dare I say it- lovely. Two minutes on your  knees in the dollar soundtrack bin will probably produce this sucker. I say glide toward the numinous...

So Hot You Could Smoke It!

Kajun SS

Think how much better Leaving Las Vegas would have been if KajunSS had provided the soundtrack. With Nick Cage weaving down I-15 with two bottles of Smirnoff between his legs and "Bored of Life" then "Shit City" blasting from his stereo, every motherfucker in that audience would leave the theater on the thanatos train.  Sadly, Figgis chose the treacly jazz deathtones of Sting, and the world lost one hell of an opportunity to say hello to King Louie at his angry best.  Louie's greatest vocal asset is that he repeats a few key phrases and by the end of the one-minute blast of loathing, you fully believe him. "I got psychological problems," for instance, in that voice, is compelling evidence for the statement. "You can eat my ass" sounds more like a command than a metaphoric putdown. Even "Eat me alive" is ambiguous.  Perhaps my favorite line comes from "Back in the Ring" when, after several unintelligible verses, we get, "Get back in the limo, you fucking whore." Without an ounce of context, that stands as a defining statement.  Darn catchy, too.  The closer is, naturally, "I Got a Drug Problem," which brings to mind the great Derelicts' anthem, "My Dad's a Fuckin' Alcoholic," clearly one of the great musical testaments to the age-old question:  alcoholism: nature or nurture? I'm not sure Louie is pushing the boundaries of psychological inquiry, but I sure do dig his song. Hey, I really would like to own this masterful EP on vinyl, so if you're holding, I'm holding something of wondrous value that you simply must have.

Sailors

The Aarght record fest continues with the Sailors' single, "Guilty Please Blues b/w Lets Go Chromin."

It sez on the back of this 45 that "Guilty Pleasure Blues" was recorded in Taiwan. I've been listening to punk and garage for decades and have NEVER heard of anything coming from Taiwan. The flip is the sloppy loud "Let's Go Cromin," which I'm sure is code for doing something bad. That hit was recorded at the "Bakehouse." Uh huh.

I'm getting bored with the high quality of music from Australia. This single ain't no exception. "Guilty Pleasure" has a vocal that sounds a lot like Johnny Thunders (!) to my ears. The guitar is some sort of weird thing with effects. Quite cool. "Let's go Chromin" is a sing-a-long rant that barely holds it together. I'm working on my second dirty martini as I write this and I'm guessing this tune is going to sound even better in about 3 more. Solid.

I have one more lp from Memphis that could disappoint. Certainly this Australian generation has its share of shitty bands? Somewhere there has to be another Midnight Oil, right?

Country Joe and the Fish- Electric Music for the Mind and Body

This is how groovy ought to sound. Like you, I wildly presume, I assumed that Country Joe was just that "Fixin' to Die Rag" song you see on every documentary ever made about the 60s. Ho hum another Berkeley wannabe radical denouncing the man and protesting the war in the most direct way possible. And that's fine. But I had no idea that the band actually made some tremendously interesting music before it was delivering the hippie-rap for a generation. A few folks had mumbled things to me in the past that these guys were actually quite good, but who can get past those images? Well, the old one dollar purchase, that cheapskate's window into previously closed worlds, confirmed those mumbles.  Much of this is gorgeous, some of it has the rich psychedelic glow of a good porch buzz at dusk, and a bit meanders in that too much acid in the studio kinda way.  No matter. If you see this cheap, snatch it. You might just be surprised, and can the aging vinyl hound hope for much more than that?

Bill Fay- Time of the Last Persecution

Bill Fay channels damaged folk that hits most of the right dark spots, but he might make you a tad uncomfortable with that whiff of crazy coming from the lyrics and the maddest guitar solos this side of Lou Reed's on "The Blue Mask." Easy listening for the apocalypse, as Sr. Fay seems obsessed with the Second Coming, whether that's Jesus or Hitler. But those melodies, that's the thing in the end, right? What's a synonym for haunting? Plug that in. I actually enjoy this more than Skip Spence's "Oar," which is probably sacrilege in some back room of an English pub where wild-eyed goateed men debate the relative merits of insane folkers. Me, I'm just a lurker on the fringes, searching for late-night sounds to make the hootch go down gently. This helps.

The James Arthur Manhunt

Holy shit. This record is a trip. Heavy damaged guitars, squawking seagulls and all kinds a weird outer space stuff. And yet it's really beautiful.

This lp came from my recently arrived Aussie related stash. I think it was released by Aarght back in 2010. Man, I dig it. I think the closest I could pin it down comparison wise is very early Flaming Lips before they crawled up their ass and thought they were Brian Wilson. Remember that Pasta Skull clear EP? That's kinda sorta what this is about.  But then at other times a bit JAMC.

Whatev. I could go through each of the songs, but really you gotta listen to it all the way through.  Five stars all the way from here in San Fran. This made my Friday night home with a bourbon buzz. Thanks, brother man.

Nasty

A 45 recently arrived to my house from Memphis Thom. What I got was a dose of misanthropic Aussie rock n roll. And as you might have gathered from the cover, the band has got a nasty name and its tunes more than match the sentiment. Side A starts with "Complicated Meditation Class," a Saints-style ripper. Nothing you haven't heard before, if you know your Oz p-rock. It's over before you know it and we're on to "Day Off." Here's where it gets more interesting. The Unfuckable's guitars and drums get much looser, almost losing control. The singer spits out what seems like scary venom until making the declaration that he's going to...just take the Day Off.  The flip is named after the band. Its sad chorus finds the narrator recalling others pronouncing him "unfuckable" in single bars, large crowds, etc. A plodding, humiliating tale that occurs with a monotone vocal over Beasts of Bourbon-esque guitar work. Nice.

In short, no new ground broken here. But you could do a lot worse for someone who is so....unfuckable.

Quick movie review

This movie is evidently up for an Oscar, so I thought I should check it out. It's rare that a book I read gets turned into a movie, and its subject matter is my favorite: baseball. And of course my wife was only too happy to watch a Brad Pitt movie. So we saw it last night. Couple of things...

1) The A's owner is played by Bobby Kottick, CEO of Activision. I used to cover that company in my equity research days. I even met him. It's really weird to see someone you've met in a movie. This is especially true when they're acting but in real life they have a corporate non-acting job. Kinda threw me for a loop. I thought for a second he was going to talk about gross margin expansion or sales of Call of Duty. Weird.

2) Brad Pitt is just an OK actor. He gets the job done, but he never really let's you forget he's acting. When I told this to my wife, she didn't look away from the screen and just mumbled "um, wha?...."

3) Why do you own a pro team and not be willing to lose money (at least initially) for it? At the beginning, the owner tells Beane he won't raise the payroll, which is 1/4 the Yankees. I understand not wanting to lose money in business, but this is not just a business. It's sports. If you wanna ensure you're always cash flow positive, go buy a laundromat. In sports you're supposed to try your best to win. Letting parasites like this owner into MLB is another reason to hate Bud Selig.

4) Jonah Hill can act. I didn't know this.

5) It's clear to me now that my biggest mistake was not getting a job in baseball. The whole time I watched the movie I was thinking how much I wished I worked in baseball. Damn it!

Can San Francisco Compete?