hear the new song by NEKO CASE

The label Neko's on, Anti-, is donating to the Best Friends Animal Society for everyone who posts this new song to their blog. So am going to try this - haven't really posted much music directly on here, but this is for a good cause and for an excellent artist.

Hear Neko's new single, "People Got A Lotta Nerve" here:
http://www.anti.com/media/download/708

Her new album, Middle Cyclone, comes out March 3.

Motivation!

These great Hunter S. Thompson motivational posters may be even better than the ones Barney has in his office on "How I Met Your Mother." You can see more of them here.

THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN ONLY ONE

So as a young college student in the late 1980s I was introduced to a film I'd somehow missed in the glory days of early basic cable: HIGHLANDER. Directed by Russell Mulcahy, he of many Duran Duran videos, music by Queen, it's a rock & roll fantasy film.

Recently my fandom of the podcast "Stuck In The '80s" inspired me to drop a line to the lads there wondering why they've not covered one of my fave films of said decade. Here is what they had to say.

Oh god, I'm runnin'! Ahhhh yeah!

Awhile back a fun tape made its rounds on the internet. It was David Lee Roth's isolated vocals from Van Halen's "Runnin' With The Devil." Now, for the low, low price of internet access, you can hear these moments anytime you wish with the DIAMOND DAVE SOUNDBOARD!

http://www.thetyser.com/
Hilarious fun for your day. I recommend trying multiple ones at once - great great fun.

History Made Here

This is the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. It was the home of the Grand Ole Opry for 30 years or so, and still occasionally hosts it. It's a beautiful venue in which loads of history was made. If you've seen Neil Young's film "Heart Of Gold" or the "Down From The Mountain" concert film, they were both shot here. Some kind of concert tribute to Alan Jackson was being held the night before our Rock + Roll Means Well show. It's a lovely place to see a show. The pews are in tribute to its original intended purpose as a tabernacle.

By the way - you can always click on a photo to see it larger; this one came out quite good.

Rock and Roll Means Well

We had the distinct pleasure of taking a long road trip to Nashville last weekend, whereupon we had the chance to see an old high school buddy playing guitar with his band and also attended a show at the historic Ryman Auditorium. The Ryman was the home of the Grand Ole Opry for about 30 years. Neil Young's "Heart of Gold" concert film was shot there, as was the one for "Down From The Mountain," the concert celebrating the music from the film "Oh Brother Where Art Thou?" by the Coen Brothers.

Anyway, this was a double bill of two indie-rock bands that are showing quite a bit of love for each other and are riding on fantastic albums released in 2008, The Hold Steady and Drive-by Truckers. The tour's called Rock + Roll Means Well based on a line from a Drive-by Truckers song called "Marry Me." The line, which has proven quite inspirational to The Hold Steady, is rock and roll means well, but it can't help telling young boys lies. These are both bands that build their own mythology as well as celebrate the rich rock & roll past, and they are two of the best bands I've ever seen live. Both bands have MySpace pages on which you can sample their music. THS is sort of the second coming of the E Street Band by way of Minneapolis and Brooklyn, and DBT are purveyors of intelligent and well-written southern rock; they'd have to be with 3 songwriters in the band. The Hold Steady I was especially excited to see, having had tix for DC back in August but got sick the day of the show and had to go home directly from work.

Since it was Halloween, The Hold Steady came out dressed as our founding fathers - bewigged in that classically British fashion. The logo on the drum kit is for their terrific record "Stay Positive." Sorry no photos of the band, I was asked by someone claiming to rep the bands to put away my "professional camera" (it's not) since they'd hired professional photogs to capture the show. This irked me pretty well because I'd made elaborate efforts to understand the photo policy for the event to the point of calling the Ryman days ahead of time and then multiple times on the day of the show as well. Whomever was in charge of communicating that policy was doing a poor job of clarifying it with the venue.

DBT came out dressed mostly as country stars, perhaps in tribue to the venue, except guitarist Mike Cooley who appeared to have nicked some kind of purple military jacket from Prince's wardrobe. Check out this photo of DBT bassist Shonna Tucker from the end of the show. Great sets from both bands, the only regret is that the co-headlining means they cannot both do full sets - because I would've gladly stuck around 4 hours for each of them to do just that. THS is probably the band that - in attitude, audience and showmanship - probably comes closest to my beloved Guided by Voices in their late 1990s heyday.

Great souvenirs from the show too - posters from DBT artist Wes Freed whose scary big black bird adorns most of the artwork he's done for their last 4 albums, plus this poster at left from the legendary printshop Hatch Show Print, which has been doing letterpress printing since the 1890s!

Some amazing history on the stage up there too in that top photo as Drive-by Truckers take their bows: from left to right, John Neff, Spooner Oldham (who is not in the band, but you've heard him play on a bazillion records recorded at the Muscle Shoals studios-like "When A Man Loves A Woman"), not sure who that is, Shonna Tucker, Mike Cooley, Patterson Hood, Brad Morgan, and their producer, David Barbe -- a man I got to see onstage playing bass in Bob Mould's phenomenal rock band, Sugar.

The encore was fantastic, including "Marry Me" (it being the title track for the tour), a cover of Van Halen's "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love", and a closing cover of Neil Young's "Rocking In The Free World" for which Shonna handed her bass over to David Barbe. The one image I think that'll stay with me is one I wish I could've gotten a photo of. It was Halloween, and a good many audience members had dressed up for the show as well. One concertgoer came dressed as Angus Young, the school-uniformed guitarist from AC/DC. Drive-by Truckers have a song called "Let There Be Rock" which celebrates a lot of the shows Patterson saw growing up, and ends with the following lines:
And I never saw Lynyrd Skynyrd but I sure saw AC/DC
With Bon Scott singing, "Let There Be Rock Tour"
With Bon Scott singing, LET THERE BE ROCK!
OK, so imagine hearing one of your favorite bands (DBT) playing this song at a very historic venue... while someone dressed as the guitarist for the band being celbrated (AC/DC) is going absolutely crazy with his imitation up in the balcony! Angus, if you're out there - you rock. Well done, sir!

H O T ** D A M N !

It's interesting to walk around the neighborhood these days. Takoma Park, MD, has a very liberal reputation - some refer to it as the Berkeley (California) of the East. The sheer number of Obama signs in the neighborhood brings his victory close to home. While it does seem to be the case that a lot of Americans woke up and smelled the rot that has set in with the Republican headquarters, the realist in me isn't as excited as I might be.

7 million votes seems... a little too close for the ramshackle, disorganized, off-message slipshod train wreck of a campaign that McCain ran. It was my hope that the country had woken up to the distracting divisive tactics being used (and on both sides) and was responding to Obama's far more positive message "Yes We Can." Unfortunately, the closeness of the popular vote makes me think that if the economy hadn't tanked so badly in the months prior to the election that it could've easily swung the other way.

This may all be looking a gift horse in the mouth, though.

The interesting thing about blogs is seeing what people really think with some degree of anonymity. It's stunning to me that there are folks who consider themselves Christians who are so shattered by the election results that they are making noises about how they are going to "RESIST" - which seems very much like code for either revolution or possibly even racism, it's hard to tell. To me, that doesn't seem like a very Christian attitude to hold.

They're bemoaning the rise of big government and citing Orwell's "1984" as something that could be coming true, when the simple fact on that front is that '1984' is really already here. George Bush's administration has legalized more spying on its citizens in the past 8 years than Big Brother could dream of in 20 lifetimes. James Bamford's newest book, "The Shadow Factory," discusses the very real NSA project that had Americans listening to phone calls of average citizens.

What's also interesting is the coalition of the bitter's crying about "redistribution of wealth", something that's already here. Because of the tax breaks given to wealthy corporations, the middle and lower classes of income in this country are being crushed. Bush and his minions have seen to it, and were practically salivating to get the corporate welfare that brings Exxonmobil record profits at a time when Americans were paying more than $4 a gallon for gas. Those corporations have not been paying their fair share, have been outsourcing jobs, and dancing with innumberable tax code loopholes for so long that to call what they do "capitalism" seems a misnomer. So listen up, folks - the "redistribution of wealth" you may be scared of is already here. It's just going up to the richest 1% of the country who keep distancing themselves ever further from the other 99% somehow.

It's also interesting to note that the coalition of the bitter thinks Obama is a threat to their guns. A 5-second Google search can turn up any number of quotes from him on the subject - he considers it a state/local issue, not a federal one. And the positions that he has shared all fall within the realm of the phrase "responsible firearm ownership" that gets crowed about.

And seriously, *what* do you think this new president could possibly do to you or this country that the outgoing fool and his pack o'cronies already haven't either done or tried to do? I won't even get started on the squandering of worldwide goodwill(post-2001), the squandering of a budget surplus, the ridiculous dual-front wars that the current guy has gotten our country into. What could really be worse than the last 8 years?

In the meantime... hot damn! My guy won! And my sister had a daughter on the same day - 7lbs.! Welcome, niece!